Hello and welcome to the DFC episode on World Creation and
embarkation.
In this episode we will introduce you to the world creation process and show you how to
properly choose a spot for your fortress.
I will not be discussing what items to bring with you in this video so we will be using
 
the default embark equipment for the purposes of this series. Look for a more detailed tutorial on
better equipping your Dwarves in a later video.
The first thing to note is that the UI is almost entirely keyboard driven.
This means we will be navigating the interface primarily through the arrow keys.
We will begin by selecting create new world and hitting enter.
After a moment hit enter again to confirm and you'll be presented with the  create a world
screen.
To change the options it is as simple as highlighting your preferred option and hitting enter.
A good set of options for a new fortress is this:                A smaller world
Very Short History. A medium number of Civilizations.
A medium number of sites, Very low Beasts, Very low Natural Savagery,
and everywhere mineral occurrence.
My reasoning for these options are as
follows: Having a world any larger than
smaller is
fairly redundant for newer players. This simply increases the size of the world which results in longer loading
times,
for little benefit in Fortress Mode. Having a very short History is important on smaller or pocket
worlds as it means there's less of a
chance of a race being killed off during some world or
other
during world generation, and any higher
substantially increases loading times.
Having a medium number civilizations in
a smaller world means there can be up to
five civilizations in your world making
it less likely that a race will be wiped
out
or excluded. Having a medium number of sites results in essentially the same result to a
fortress mode
player without increasing load times, due to the short history.
Having Beasts set to very low doesn't
affect your fortresses likelihood to be
attacked by one,
however it does limit the risk of a civilization being destroyed. Having natural savagery
set to very low while potentially un-dwarfy, is a good setting for newer players
to avoid some of the more quote unquote
"!!fun!!" creatures Dwarf Fortress has to offer. Having mineral occurence set to everywhere
means minerals can be found everywhere :O
No worrying about the lack materials for
newbies.
Now that we've chosen our settings, we simply hit the Y key to begin world gen
and watch as the world is created.
It shouldn't take too long.
The world may be portrayed in ASCII characters here but thanks to our tileset,
the actual in-game screen should be much easier on the eyes.
Once it's done, hit enter to accept and wait a moment while it does it's thing.
You should then be brought back to the main menu where you can now hit the Start Playing option.
Select the world we just created and hit enter. Select Dwarf fortress and hit enter again.
Once more now wait as the world is loaded and then as the calendar moves forward a couple of weeks
and should be presented with a complicated looking view of your world.
Your cursor is the flashing yellow X symbol. You can move it around the world with the arrow keys.
For now ignore the world view and look at the region view instead.
Find a green looking area and scroll around until you find a shrubland or
forest with a stream or a river.
You can see the contents of the zone you have highlighted on the right hand side.
Once you find such a place, look at the local view on the left. Use the "U", "M",
"K" and "H" to move the
highlighted area there around until it
contains the river,
preferably running through the centre of it. Once that's done hit the E key to embark.
Here you can see your options for embarking. In this video we will just use the
default gear set, so just hit enter on play now. After a brief pause, you'll be presented with a
screen similar to this one detailing your Dwarves trek and
giving a hint at one of the wildlife types you may encounter. It will also show the name your Dwarves gave to your new Fortress.
Hit enter and you will be presented with your chosen area and your Dwarves huddled around their
wagon awaiting your orders.
Well that concludes this episode of DFC,
If there's any aspect of Dwarf Fortress you'd like to see deconstructed, just leave a suggestions in
the comments below. Thanks for watching.
