Hey, hey people. Seth here. Today, I'll be covering a long-running cult classic that's still updated and developed to this very day. A game which chronicles the lives and accomplishments of stumpy alcoholics as they struggle to avoid sobriety. A game where the most ludicrous events take place daily, where civilizations rise and fall just because someone left a Necronomicon in the public library. A game where the UI is so useless and convoluted that you'd honestly have an easier time playing Microsoft Excel. I'm speaking of course about Dwarf Fortress, Dwarf Fortress is less of a game and more of a complex fantasy world simulation. Made by one guy over 20 years and probably for the rest of his natural and unnatural lifespan, as we plan to crowdfund Tarn Adams a synthetic body so he can focus on what truly matters. Dwarf Fortress really is one of the greatest autism projects to ever blossom. Fun fact, it's also the hardest game to run on PC. Even an i7 processor chokes and dies the moment you forget to sterilize your cats. If not for the ever-increasing technological demands of Dwarf Fortress, AMD and Intel would be bankrupt right now. To even begin playing Dwarf Fortress, you'll need some prescription medication. But more importantly you'll need a world to play in. So, we create one. We set some parameters and the game will then calculate 250 fucking years of history for this randomly generated world. And, depending on your computer, this may also take 250 years. Once the world is made, it's all yours. And like an abusive lover, she will caress and beat you senseless. And each time. You'll come back for more. There's two main game modes you can play in Dwarf Fortress. You can either choose to embark on distant lands and lead a fortress to ruin, or die horrifically in the pursuit of adventure. To begin, let's cover fortress mode first. All you have to do is pick a nice place to embark, and that's about it. Despite common myths, Dwarf Fortress isn't complicated. Just follow a couple of tutorials and you'll be a seasoned veteran in no time. You should also download and use the lazy noob pack, because the game is almost unplayable without it. Some, may disagree with this statement. But to put it simply, they're fucking wrong. These same people will disagree with my choice of tile set or the fact that I use a tile set at all. To answer these concerns and make this video that much easier to watch, I will be using all of the tile sets at random. In fortress mode you start out with 7 dwarves given the difficult task of establishing civilization. The longer you survive and flourish, the more migrants will arrive from neighboring cities, attracted by the promise of your growing fortress. From there on any number of things can happen. Disaster, tragedy, invasions and tantrum spirals, which threaten to end your fort at any given moment. But whether you live or die, just remember: Losing is fun. It's impossible to cover everything. So, let me tell you some stories. The first fortress I ever founded was absolutely terrible. We had no metal. So instead we fought with sticks and traded pottery for any possible scrap of metal. We also lived in constant fear. There was a Werezebra on the loose. He kept eating my chickens and trampling my Dwarfs as if I couldn't escape the furry menace in real life, it torments me in my video games as well. It turned out that the werezebra was a human musician who plays at my tavern. So I let him stay and snap a few chicken necks every month. The place was actually quite successful. five years on and no major invasions. What the hell? I asked my friend who knows Dwarf Fortress to take a look. He came back shocked and told me: You're not at war with the goblins, how? I had no idea. My fortress was a place of culture and learning. Of drunken revelry and international diplomatic renown. Life proceeded as normal. And then, one day, one of my guests of honor, a legendary human wrestler had too much to drink and went into a murderous rage. He proceeded to grab a goblin dancer and pulled off her lower jaw. As she was screaming, he began thrashing her with her own jawbone. The situation quickly deteriorated, as she retaliated back. My other dwarves, upon seeing that a man was under attack, and, fearing for his life, used appropriate self-defence to remove the assailants ability to chew food, launched into a furious brawl. It was a bloodbath and marked the beginning of the race riots. Every Goblin in my fortress was slaughtered. For our acts of racial cleansing, the goblins had declared war on us, one we couldn't win. And all because some retard couldn't handle his mushroom wine. Several months later, my fortress was swallowed by the green horde. Those who weren't murdered walled themselves off, went crazy and consumed each other. The rest starved to death. Dwarf Fortress, a fun light-hearted experience for the whole family. My second fortress fared slightly better, until I dug too deep. My third? Well, we all know how this ends already right? One of my dwarves got possessed, so I walled off his workshop, forgot about it, and accidentally opened up his crypt in the middle of town. The nauseous fumes from his hot decomposing body. erupted across several levels, driving everyone insane from the sight and stench of his swollen cadaver. In the chaos, a mother dropped her toddler into a shallow pool of water. The child drowned, causing the mother to go into a tantrum and attack an experienced axe dwarf, who decapitated her. The dead bodies caused more tantrums, which would result in even more dead bodies, which eventually reduced my population to a single person, a single axe dwarf who was now considered legendary, having gained enough experience from beheading everybody else. My fourth attempt was actually fine. The fortress still stands, as a grisly reminder of why we have health and safety. I read online somewhere that you could train your dwarves extremely quickly, by constructing a danger room. The idea is simple. We put a dwarf in a room filled with traps. We activate them and our brave warriors will gracefully dodge and block every single one of them. But this process wasn't fast enough. So we replaced the traps with coins. We hit the lever and 500 freshly minted coins would harmlessly ricochet at high speed across the room, turning our dwarves into professional soldiers instantly. However, it didn't work. 500 coins suddenly ricocheted at high speed and destroyed my dwarfs windpipe. Even the best surgeons available couldn't operate quick enough to restore oxygen supply. The cause of death was ruled to be asphyxiation by a legal tender. Not to be dissuaded. I tried to optimize coin training. I made my men wear five layers of cotton around their necks. The results, several women were now widows, and about a dozen men who are now buried without a throat. It turns out coins are very dangerous. Attempt number 5, my current and final fortress. One day, I receive a notification: one of my master engravers had just sculpted a masterpiece on the dining room wall. I find the engraving and read the description. He just sculpted a drawing of himself, stabbing another dwarf. And soon after, he actually stabbed him. What an absolute lad. This was also about the time I decided to embark on a haunted biome. And my personal advice, don't do that. Nothing dies on a haunted biome. The moment you kill an animal it gets back up. The moment you chop off a limb it gets possessed and tries to choke you. Did you know this applies to shellfish and crustaceans as well? I didn't. But I've just lost a good fisherman to an undead pile of lobster shells. If all of this sounds like too much to handle, then you can play adventure mode instead. Adventure mode lets you design and control a single character, that can interact with, influence, and shape the world. Once again, it's impossible to cover everything. So instead, I'll share some of my characters exploits. The very first character I ever made was a human, locally renowned for his acts of heroism. I didn't know the controls and didn't really care. I spent my entire time accusing children of being vampires and throwing silver at them until they died. No one dared intervene in my righteous crusade against darkness. Incidentally one of the people I accused, was, actually a vampire. Who proceeded to kill me instantly, to get rid of the evidence. My second character was a kobold, who had successfully integrated with modern civilization. To demonstrate how integrated I was, I immediately assassinated the king. To my surprise, the guards didn't even care. My reward for committing regicide was monarchy. I had become the new ruler of this kingdom. I spent the rest of my career spreading rumours, that the previous king was murdered by myself. Everyone refused to believe it and said I, the king, was full of shit. My third character managed to find a really nice book. A book of necromancy. Which I generously donated to one of my fortress libraries. After retiring from adventuring and checking up on the place, I was pleasantly surprised to find the place overrun with undead. Then I got bored and installed some lore friendly mods. Currently I'm playing as Vegeta, a local Saiyan Prince who accidentally used Instant Transmission to teleport to hell. There, I learned that her wrestling system in Dwarf Fortress is extremely elaborate, allowing Vegeta to chokehold demons while he plucks out their necks. After returning from the underworld, Vegeta spent several hours vomiting on townspeople and indirectly killed a child by doing push-ups. Later that day an elvish serf refused to yield to the Saiyan Prince. He rejected his generous demands for both of his shoes in exchange for his life. Now, I'm not very good at Dragon Ball Z lore, but I don't remember Vegeta being able to make Destructo discs. But who gives a shit. In this mod he can. So, I decapitated a bunch of elves with energy disks and turned into a giant ape. Then I got drunk and crawled in the floor, stealing people's genitals. In case you haven't figured this out already, Dwarf Fortress is an amazing game. And not only that, it's unique. There's nothing quite like it. It's a sandbox and you make your own fun. And if you get bored of sand, there's a billion mods out there which make the game that much more intricate and entertaining. Sure, it's hard to get into. But then again, so are nursing homes. I give it a perfect score. Perfection is subjective which is why everyone will see something different. Or something gay. As always, more content to come, so stay tuned. This video comes out much later than expected. What's up with that Seth you lazy schmuck? You've not even taken our money since November. Truth be told, I took a corporate position in December. Then I realized I can do a hundred times more by myself. So now I'm going all in. Seth is going full-time. A warm thanks to the many members of the merchants guild, who have been generously funding and bankrolling these videos. You're all truly wonderful. I missed the chance to say this before, so, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and have a Happy New Year. (Making subtitles takes way longer then I thought it would.)
"A game where civilizations rise and fall just because someone left Necronomicon in a public library"
- SsethTzeentach, 2019
Also, have someone tried that coin stuff? Is it real?
I love sseth's videos. This is quite the surprise.
Great review. If you had described half of the stuff you are able to do in DF as a AAA game from a major studio, people would lose their minds with anticipation.
A great thanks to all members of the Merchants Guild for making my dream come true
Fun video editing fact: zoom cuts are literally the only way to transition between two clips
I’ve been looking forward to this.
God I love Sseth
I have been waiting for this day, praise the merchant's guild.
Finally new Seth's video