Dwarf Fortress is a plate spinning game. You're trying to keep many systems operational. The best way to approach it is to start with small goals. You will lose a few games but you'll be surprised how quickly you develop. For your first few attempts, I suggest focusing on these discrete goals:
- Learning the interface
- Digging some rooms out
- Building furniture (Beds, Doors, Workshops)
- Managing food and alcohol production
- Designing bedrooms
- Securing your fortress
- Military and Hospital
- Metalworking and Industry
Pick one goal per game to focus on, it doesn't matter if everything collapses, your goal is to learn as much about that facet of the game as possible. Once you've got one down, move onto the next one. You'll be spinning plates with the best of them in no time. Also don't abandon your game, you'll be surprised what you can learn when everything is going wrong. For example:
I started a new game shortly after Dave finished his video, at the moment I'm at 130 dwarves in a secure location. I'm in the third stage of a war with the local goblins, they attacked when I was building and I managed to secure myself and use archers from the walls to take them down. I had no material so I made crossbows and bolts out of the bones of slaughtered animals. Once they were driven off I pressed out, erecting great walls and pillboxes connected by a series of underground tunnels. But then disaster struck, I was attacked by a force of goblins and trolls before the walls were completed. They got into my fortress before I could raise the drawbridges. My ramshackle military met them as they passed the food stockpiles, a narrow two square passage that became a killzone. Dwarves and goblins fell but I outnumbered them. By luck one of my waves of migrants had been a group of dwarven rangers. As my defenders fell I conscripted replacements to step over the bodies, pick up the axe and continue the fight. Through sheer force of numbers I prevailed. The wall was complete and the final drawbridge was raised, sealing me away from the outside world, and not a moment too soon as a large group of goblins, olms and trolls currently siege the walls.
But now a new darkness stalks the fortress, dwarves are being found drained of blood with alarming regularity. I may have sealed my dwarves off from the danger outside, but unwittingly sealed them in with something much worse.
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