I'm following the book 'Getting Started with DF' and I'm getting stuck on page 14 (PDF) / 27 (ePub). I'm generating my world per the recommendations of the author but after using the site finder I don't see any green X's on my map. I've generated 4-5 maps so far and never gotten one.

It always seems to be unable to find 'Flux Stone'.

I've not followed the book itself, but it could very well be your just in a pinch of bad luck. If you turn the Flux Stone search filter off, do you get plenty of green Xs?

Yup it found a ton. Guess I'm just really unlucky.

I'll keep trying. Going to be stuck on a airplane for a few hours so I figured what better time to learn DF?

Thanks!

Just for the record, it's not so uncommon to have no "perfect" spots. In a regular game, you'd just make do with the best you can find

If you are having any trouble you can ask people here and look at things people have already said.

Thats a problem with this book specifically. During world gen do not generate minerals EVERYWHERE. Take it one down from the highest setting. If you gen the minerals EVERYWHERE you will actually push out all flux stone. Thats a current bug. The book.. doesnt take that into account (I found out the hard way after 7 world gens and then searching for bug reports)

Edit: The next hurdle I hit with the book is. If you don't find rock in the top layers you wont be able to make the rock nest boxes early on. He says use wood instead but... You don't actually have anybody with the woodcrafting. That means that nobody will even attempt to craft something out of wood. So I'd load up dwarf fortress pretty quick, select a random dwarf (expedition leader isnt a bad candidate) and put a blue square in the wood crafting box. Everything else is almost golden advice in this book and I didn't run into any more snags.

@jesterroyal said:

Thats a problem with this book specifically. During world gen do not generate minerals EVERYWHERE. Take it one down from the highest setting. If you gen the minerals EVERYWHERE you will actually push out all flux stone. Thats a current bug. The book.. doesnt take that into account (I found out the hard way after 7 world gens and then searching for bug reports)

Edit: The next hurdle I hit with the book is. If you don't find rock in the top layers you wont be able to make the rock nest boxes early on. He says use wood instead but... You don't actually have anybody with the woodcrafting. That means that nobody will even attempt to craft something out of wood. So I'd load up dwarf fortress pretty quick, select a random dwarf (expedition leader isnt a bad candidate) and put a blue square in the wood crafting box. Everything else is almost golden advice in this book and I didn't run into any more snags.

Awesome! Thanks for the tips.

I have nothing to add, I just want to be part of this thread.

@FiZi: Oh and i meant to say load up dwarf therapist real quick and change someone.

For what it's worth, there was a correction by the author re: setting minerals to "everywhere." You can find this in the errata section at O'Reilly if you bought the ebook from there originally.

Ah, bought it from amazon. Darn.

Fortunately I did get the book from O'Reilly :)

I'd like to start with DF too, got the book but I get more stuff by seeing people do things.

Alas I do not have subscription to view Dave Fortress so any of you guys know a way to either see it, get a temporary subscription of sorts without having access to a credit card or some similarly fun and charming guy playing this game on youtube who doesn't have an annoying voice, curses too much or yells.

I know, I'm not asking for much. (Ive searched for subscription stuff but got fed up browsing nonsense about other subjects that just happen to have they keywords I entered)

Thanks in advance

@Mansemat: I guess 2 things

Dave's stuff follows the book very tightly in video one and then very loosely with a lot of chat involvement in two. It's not really a good beginner how to video or anything like that. Its more just fun to watch. I will skim for good (current) you tube for good links and get back to you if i find any.

If you are really interested in the subscriber videos but don't have a ton of money I say sign up for a monthly subscription. Pay five dollars. Take your fill of as many videos as you can during that time and cancel. And repeat when you have the money to do it again. Not sure how many people will help you circumvent the thing that provides a great deal of revenue to this site. Besides the HTML5 player is almost completely worth the price of admission in my mind.

I hope anyone who paid money for a book on how to play DF is giving money to Toady as well. Guy has busted his ass for a long long time making that game and deserves support.

@Amikron: You made an account to say that? Okay.

Edit: I guess not entirely to say that since you've filled out your profile. But I think that as a first post is a strange way to join a conversation and try to make friends =/.

@jesterroyal: No, I have held off making an account for awhile, was waiting till I was going to subscribe to the site. (edit: Subscribe meaning upgrade my account, sorry for any confusion there) What difference does it make exactly even if I did? Toady deserves support. Way more support than some random person writing a book about his game.

As for your edit, I wasn't trying to make friends, I was trying to be honest. I've given money annually to Toady since before DF was a thing, and the guy deserves the support. He lives off donations, and all he does is work on DF.

Something just seems wrong about profiting off the guy when he himself isn't even selling the game.

You can trade for some flux instead and also you can manage perfectly fine without it its no big deal. Just embark and have fun.

@Amikron said:

@jesterroyal: No, I have held off making an account for awhile, was waiting till I was going to subscribe to the site. (edit: Subscribe meaning upgrade my account, sorry for any confusion there) What difference does it make exactly even if I did? Toady deserves support. Way more support than some random person writing a book about his game.

As for your edit, I wasn't trying to make friends, I was trying to be honest. I've given money annually to Toady since before DF was a thing, and the guy deserves the support. He lives off donations, and all he does is work on DF.

Something just seems wrong about profiting off the guy when he himself isn't even selling the game.

Well dude. Toady is awesome for creating this game and deserves credit for it but doesnt a guy writing a book also deserves credit for that?

Since Toady is not selling his game but accepting donations instead let every guy decide for himself if he wants to donate or not becouse thats obviosly the way toady wants it.

@Amikron: I'm pretty sure your entire argument played out at the bay 12 forums. End of the argument being that TinyPirate (the writer) is not obligated to pay anything to Toady but has already said he will be making donations off the revenue once costs are covered just because hes a good guy. I'll side with @rethla and say I think toady wants your money to go to wherever you want it to go. This book is the only reason im playing DF now because I've bounced off of the game 4 or 5 times without understanding why I die because video tutorials were outdated or the wiki, by its very nature, makes it super hard to find anything if you don't know exactly what you are looking for. Thanks to the book I understand what I am doing and I'm having fun with the game. Because of that I plan on donating, which i never would have before had I not found this book that made the game approachable in its starting stages.

I really do think you should try to make friends, its a nice enough community. And if you've been playing DF for so long you oughta pop into the help/hint thread and lay down some advice to people like me who only started a few weeks ago. I'm sure you knowledge would be appreciated. Also, maybe you can join the reserves of our succession game. It's in pretty easy terrain but many of us are just noobs who don't have impeccable dwarf time management yet.

@jesterroyal: @rethla: I'm sorry you both took what I said as arguing, I should have worded it better. Should have been more of an encouragement. So many people never donate to Toady. I wasn't suggesting anyone was bad for getting the book, just that if you're going to get the book, you certainly should toss Toady some money as well.

Hell, you can get a terrible cool drawing or story out of it!