DF part 1: Setting up

Dwarf Fortress isn't necessarily hard, it just has a learning curve that's more akin to a cliff than a slope. It doesn't help that 70% of that cliff is simply trying to figure out how the game works, either. So to try and smooth things out a bit, here's a documented playthrough of (how I play) the game.

This post is just listing the init.txt settings, and can probably be skipped by most people.

Disclaimer: This is using version 40c. Your play experience may change depending on your version.

Step one: Download the game.
Step two: Extract the game from the zip file.
Step three: Open the game folder, then data then init, then open init.txt.

The game's just fine straight out of the box, but there's a few options I like to change. Thankfully, the init file is well-documented.

My changes:

[SOUND:OFF]
[INTRO:OFF] After playing the game a few dozen times, I just prefer to load up a music player instead and skip the intro.
[WINDOWEDX:800]
[WINDOWEDY:600]
[FONT:curses_800x600.bmp] I like the 800x600 tileset better than the 600x300 one. It's just personal preference.
[AUTOSAVE:SEASONAL] Dwarf Fortress, after all this time, is still in alpha stage (which means there's no guarantee that there aren't any game-crashing bugs). I don't know why this isn't set to at least YEARLY as default.
[PAUSE_ON_LOAD:YES] The game starts paused when you load it up. Useful if you're easily distracted.
[VARIED_GROUND_TILES:NO] This is the one setting I'm changing just for this playthrough. I normally like the mix of punctuation marks that represent the terrain, but it might make for confusing screenshots.
[ENGRAVINGS_START_OBSCURED:YES] See above, but I usually change this one anyway.
[SHOW_FLOW_AMOUNTS:YES] Lets you see how much water remains in a pool at a glance, instead of having to inspect it manually.

And that's it. Feel free to mess around with the init for your own games, this is just how I set things up.

Next: World Creation