I've never modded DF before so I'm wondering what some of the top mods are and why they're good.
This isn't a contest of who's the best of the best, just which mods are polished and well made.
Posted Nov 20, 2011, 8:13 AM UTC
The fortress defense mod is good if you're looking to be attacked more. The mod increases the number of attacks on your fort, and adds like 12 new civilizations that will attack you.
I'm a big fan of Genesis and Kobold Camp.
Both of these mods raise difficulty for the game as a whole, but do so in radically different ways. Genesis adds a bunch of new features including stronger enemies, different castes of dwarves, and new kinds of metals. Kobold Camp allows you to play as kobolds who cannot mine, cannot use most metals, and generally are much squishier than dwarves.
I recommend Genesis aswell, It adds a lot of cool stuff, with its difficulty being from it's additions (Not that it's TO much harder) rather than kobold camp's restrictions.
I can't imagine how difficult this game would be not being able to mine or use metal, and be even squishier. I've played a decent amount of Dwarf Fort but never even thought of something like this.
It's actually really fun. You do have to change your expectations quite a bit though. With Dwarf Fortress Vanilla I tend to pretty much try to set up a steel industry and get everyone extraordinarily happy before setting up some kind of a big construction or other. Getting your militia armored in all steel is cool, but not really something to write home about. And really, after a certain point frame-rate is what kills most fortresses. Now, in Kobold Camp when your loincloth wearing 'bolds take down an alligator together (with the loss of several brave soldiers) it is cause for celebration. That's what makes it really interesting.
After that I think it does actually sound pretty cool. Do you start with way more kobolds, since 7 would get slaughtered by anything?
Nope! You start with seven and you pray to the fuzzy-nosed gods that dangerous things don't kill you. As I mentioned, it promotes a way different play style. Immediately trying to hunt big animals is a good way to lose your kobolds as is letting people stray too far from home. But once you've got some bone armor and spears the real hunting can begin.
I use the Lazy Noob Pack. It does lots of wonderful things: SoundSense gives you pertinent sound effects and even some dwarfy voice-overs! :D Stonesense lets you see your fort in three dimensions! Also includes a seasonal auto-backup utility (in case your most talented Legendary +5 CraftsDwarf gets a Mood for something that just plain doesn't exist...) and also Dwarf Therapist, which provides you with a FAR MORE INTUITIVE GUI for managing your dwarfs' labors according to their skills!! INDISPENSIBLE!
Major mods and utilities: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=28829.0
Shameless plug: Wanderer's Friend. Adds new materials and adventure more crafting to the game.
Major mods that i tried: Genesis adds nice collection of dangerous beasts(you love deadly poisonous snakes right?) and lots of other stuff. Higher difficulty, slightly different feel from vanilla due to it. Alchemy(new materials) is relatively limited, some support for low-metal worlds.
Forlorn realms has very nice new weapons, tries to build progression into game. Some alchemy.
Civilization forge has (other then civilizations) rich alchemy. Only works on very mineral-rich worlds.
DF Advanced has some alchemy, hard separation of castes roles.
Wizards has mostly wizards and sorcerers with fun characters.
All major mods include more civilizations and you can add more from fortress defense for example.
Minor mods: make platinum and gold craftable into weapons, create platinum warhammers, smash everything.
Is there a utility that allows you to pick and choose what races you throw into the game?
Genesis seems really interesting, with some sensible additions (grinding non economic rock for a small chance of obtaining ores/coal), but the documentation appears to be out of date.
I'm not sure if they are pre-packaged mods, but I always:
I always add the [NO_EAT] tag to Kobolds in the raws so they survive past worldgen. It's a nice stepping stone up to full goblin invasions.
This kind of stuff should be included in the Lazy Newb Pack.