Spoilers ahead.

I started up a new world in DF2010 late on April 1st, and have been playing it pretty much every chance I get since then. So far I've lost one fortress to subterranean horrors, drowned one adventurer in a puddle, retired another adventurer after achieving local fame, and am currently working on a second fortress.

So what's new in DF2010? Well, for whatever reason, I was REALLY looking forward to healthcare. Dwarves no longer just lie in bed and heal a little every season, but instead require dressing, sutures, stints or casts, surgery or even a trip to the traction bench, depending on the severity of the wounds. This also deals with the new material and biology updates. Creatures are no longer a loose collection of "parts", but have actual anatomy. Layers of hair, skin, fat, muscle, nerves and bone all protect internal organs, depending on the internal geography of the creature in question.

Unfortunately, I never had a chance to see this in action during the life of my first fortress. What I DID see, and what I should have REALLY been looking forward to, was the completely reworked underworld. In 40d, underground features were fairly rare. You could dig down only so far from your starting position, and you'd be very lucky to find anything other than rock. In DF2010, you're pretty much guaranteed to find something interesting if you dig deep enough. I assume you can dig as deep as Z-level 0, but I've never actually gotten that far. In my first fortress I got maybe 50 levels down, from a starting position of around Z-level 130, and in the process uncovered three massive caverns, filled with mushrooms, giant spider webs, giant lakes and the denizens of the deep. This was, unfortunately, my downfall. By the time I had hit the third cavern, my fortress was overrun by blind cave ogres. FUN! =D

I did finally get a chance to check out healthcare during my second fortress. A pterosaur titan had paid me a little visit, killing a few straggling workers, before my axedwarves managed to take it down. One of them, though, suffered a deep laceration to her upper right arm. She's unconscious, bleeding, so the others drag her to the hospital. There, she's checked over by a diagnostician and has her wounds cleaned. I also get to see on her health reports page that the cut has penetrated deep into her muscle tissue, severing a few motor nerves. She'll never quite regain full control of her right hand. The bleeding is staunched, she's prescribed sutures and bandages, and gets sent on her merry way.

Of course, this is Dwarf Fortress, so something completely ludicrous has to happen somewhere, and so it did! While the axedwarf is being treated, there happen to be two other dwarves in the hospital, apparently watching, a mason and a fishery worker. The mason was friends with one of the other dwarves who was torn apart during the attack, and in a fit of miserable rage he snaps and pummels the poor fisher to within an inch of her life. I seriously did not expect her to live. Lacerations everywhere, severe organ damage, both legs and one arm broken ... but she was already in the hospital, and was quickly treated. Now around this time, I had happened to uncover raw adamantine, and was in the process of extracting it into metal strands. Due apparently to the quirks of the new material system, adamantine strands are considered thread, and hospitals will use whatever thread is closest for sutures. So, yeah. This fisher's grievous wounds (including her HEART. Dwarven doctors are hardcore) are being held together with the most valuable substance known to dwarvenkind. She'd better APPRECIATE those stitches, goddamnit. If she, uh. If she ever comes out of her coma. =I

But of course this is the initial release of a major revision, so naturally it's buggy as hell. My first fortress nearly starved to death because dwarves aren't set to haul food in the standing orders by default. Food rots if it's not put into a stockpile, and prepared meals never left the kitchen, so it would all rot away. Also, don't ever tell your kitchens to use booze as an ingredient. They'll just take massive quantities of it and never use it, denying its use to anyone else, even though your stocks screen says you're swimming in it.

As part of a new feature, dwarves will continue working even if they're somewhat hungry or thirsty. This is to alleviate the problem where, for instance, a miner will walk halfway across the map to mine out a few tiles, swing his pick, then decide he's thirsty and head all the way back to the stockpile. This has a few quirks, though. Dwarves view partying as a job, and they're pretty much partying every chance they get. They'll chat and converse and do whatever it is they do until they're all dying of thirst, at which point they'll shuffle together like a hive mind to the stockpile to satiate themselves. This leads to some pathfinding weirdness, which I'll get to later, but mostly this is an annoyance because they view being thirsty or hungry as a mood detriment. My dwarves are right on the verge of snapping from partying so much.

And yeah, pathfinding! Get too many dwarves going through too small an area and you'll get a bizarre traffic jam, dozens of dwarves laying prone in a pile, nothing moving until the guy on top decides to do something, which can take awhile. I've always made all my corridors and doorways at least two tiles wide to alleviate this kind of thing, but it doesn't seem to help here. Any kind of mass dump or hauling order seems to cause this.

And job professions and labor can be a little unclear. Immigrant dwarves will be titled by their highest level skill, but they won't actually have their labor options set to DO it unless it's higher than a certain level. Oh hey, a gem setter just showed up! Let's have him build a jewelry workshop. But oh, no, he's only a DABBLING gem setter, so he won't actually do anything unless we go into his labor options and set it manually.

There are probably dozens more little nitpicks I could write about, but it really doesn't matter. A fix will likely be out soon, and even with the glitches, this is still easily the best game I've ever played. I could play it for ten hours straight and be "wow ... that was really satisfying" afterward. Any other game would leave you feeling drained and hating yourself the next morning.



TL;DR - I rant and rave about Dwarf Fortress because I am a gigantic NERD.