Losing is fun in Dwarf Fortress but it’s also difficult. Once a fort is successfully constructed and sustainable, it can be very challenging and take very long to raze it, if only done half-heartedly. That’s why I have taken the initiative to enlist the help of researchers for +gold coins+ [38] to find the most efficient ways all over the world to have !fun!. After all: the faster you lose, the more frequently you can start losing and the faster your lose-bar will increase.

Let’s start rationally with a dichotomy. To lose, you do some things or not do others. I will structure the advice with that in mind and order it chronologically.

World Gen:

Do: make the world small. This is because small worlds are more imbalanced and will likely result in a dead civilisation early on. Also, combining this with high hostility will help you lose even faster due to your sardines (civilisation) being jammed into a small can (the world) with chillies (goblins and the like).

Do: set the history length to either very long or very short. A short history means less megabeasts, monsters and vampires have been killed. I call them Fortress Fun-associates! Giant toad-sloth that undulates rhythmically*? Welcome to the fortress! If you set it to long, there won’t be as many FFAs but there will be something better: unpredictability. Just as small worlds are imbalanced, so are old worlds. What better way to throw yourself at defeat than starting in a warped world? Speaking of a warped world…

Do: Evil biomes. Man, how much more obvious can it be? It’s got failure painted all over it. In blood. Dwarf blood. It rains dwarf blood. If we went to a sports game and it started raining dwarf blood, I can assure you that both teams would voluntarily lose (amongst some other reactions of course). If you want the luxury of losing in the comfort of an evil biome where ever you embark, edit the game files and change the secret count to 1000… Is it really cheating? Hmmm, it seems more like un-cheating to me.

Don’t: not do towers. Towers. Have you ever had a neighbour that borrows from you all the time? Have you ever been that neighbour? With towers, you’ll have neighbours who give, and never take. It’s like loss on a silver platter. It starts of small (ñ) but eventually becomes a torrent of shattered success (ÑÑÑ)!

Embarking perpetration:

Dont: embark immediately. The game will choose for you and choose well. It’s out to get you and make you win. control your own destiny and make sure that, that destiny is short-lived.

Do: before you click “embark”, try a mental excercise of repeating the words “I’m a loser” a few times out loud. Remember, with a good attitude, you’ve lost even before you’ve begun.

Don’t: take anything useful. Minimize your equipment. It’s ok to take pickaxes, though. Dwarves are very skilled at doing very stupid things with pickaxes.

Do: spend all your points on cheesemaking skills for the dwarves. They’ll appreciate it in the long run (metaphorically speaking).

Settling in:



Don’t: become too comfortable. Make the fortress with the mindset of “nothing to see here; just passing through.”

Do: when carving your fortress out, make sure to have multiple entrances. Dig those things. No, wait… Just have one really large entrance and make sure that it’s bigger than the fortress itself. Actually, you know what, don’t bother digging a fortress at all.

Don’t: if you ended up bringing some dogs, be sure to not set them up on guard for thieves. Just butcher them. The same goes for cats. However, butchering them is useful because it yields food so maybe it’ll be better to drop them down a hole.

Do: if you took the initiative to embark on a volcano, make an early lava-trap and conveniently forget to build the components out of fire-safe materials.

Do: the first place you should dig is straight down. You can stop when you get to a cave because that’s where you want to be. Caves are an excellent source of FFAs and will guarantee high attrition. Creatures like trolls also live there so their “building destroyer” tag is a bonus!

Don’t: bury or memorialize your dwarves once dead. Ghosts are FFAs too in my opinion. Just make your refuse stockpile a corpse stockpile too. It’s probably safer to just have one stockpile for everything and, to save space, put it where your dwarves sleep (if they even have a place).

Do: kill every single trader that comes to your sorry abode. There is no faster way to turn someone into an enemy than killing them.

Bonus:

Do: find the hidden fun-stuff.

Footnotes:

*Beware its acidic sweat.