History YMMV / DwarfFortress

** Kobolds. Part of the community sees them as [[CutenessProximity adorable]] [[TheWoobie Woobies]], and the other part sees them as [[GoddamnedBats lowly thieves]] [[KillEmAll to be slain as soon as possible]]. (Although again, this usually escalates to [[VitriolicBestBuds entirely silly proportions]].)

*** Spiked wooden balls, a particular type of trap, are an economical game breaker as they possess an unusually high item value, which combined by how easy they are to mass-produce, allows you to buy off entire caravans with nothing but a few dozens of them.

** The [[VitriolicBestBuds friendly teasing]] that occurs between tile users and ASCII users, or between those who prefer Adventure Mode to Fortress Mode, is occasionally mistaken for this.

* BetterAsALetsPlay: This is one of the most (if not THE most) complex video games in existence and thus has an extremely steep learning curve. But at the same time, its simulation depth and unmatched VideoGameCrueltyPotential often generate the most badass and/or ridiculous video game stories you've ever heard. Because of this, watching let's plays and reading forum posts about this game is way more entertaining than actually going through the trouble of learning how to play it yourself.

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* QuicksandBox: The game doesn't (as yet) come with a tutorial. Some aspects of the game have complex and undocumented requirements. The wiki -- or failing that, a geology textbook -- helps out a good deal with both points. [[TrialAndErrorGameplay Or practice repeatedly making new fortresses and abandoning them when things go wrong]] -- which they will (losing is fun!) -- until you start to get the hang of making a working fortress, or at least one that's not so dysfunctional.

** [[AwesomeMcCoolName Cacame Awemedinade]], [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast The Immortal Onslaught]], Elf King of the Dwarves. According to the (partially player-invented) story, he joined the Dwarven military after his wife was killed and eaten by other Elves, just so that he could kill more elves. He proved to hate elves so much, that he was made the Dwarven King.

** The announcement that the game is coming to Steam has created two distinct camps. Those who couldn't be happier since being on Steam gives the game a larger audience, and Toady will receive more revenue to keep the game rolling forward. Others feel it's a terrible idea - being free gives the game an excuse to be in it's current shape, but putting a price tag on a game that [[PerpetualBeta has no planned date for even a beta release]], is [[ObviousBeta full of bugs that sometimes don't get fixed for years]] and is overall just [[NintendoHard extremely difficult]] will likely result in the Steam release being flooded by negative reviews by players who aren't as forgiving as the current players are.

** In earlier versions, werebeasts tend to change into their weak, naked humanoid form at the worst possible time (they're only beasts in the full moon), often the very instant after their arrival gets announced. This is no longer the case as of 0.40, where werebeasts are ''vicious''.

** You also occasionally run into randomly-generated enemies that are made of solid stone or even metal, and are as hard to kill as that would imply. To make things even worse, if the RandomNumberGod hates you, they can also have a dust attack that is, in its most deadly form, an InstantDeathRadius with about the same range as your archers.\\\
Also in previous versions, a Forgotten Beast made of poison mist. Then, a forgotten beast made of any intangible material could ''only'' be killed by being encased in obsidian or ice. However, forgotten beasts made of such material are now laughably easy to kill; one punch will tear off limbs.

** "Hidden Fun Stuff" is ''officially'' a nickname for anything Toady wants to talk about in dev logs without spoiling it, but the fanbase near-exclusively uses it to refer to [[spoiler:gateways to hell]].
** "Cotton Candy" for [[spoiler:adamantine]], "Clowns" for [[spoiler:demons]], and "The circus" for [[spoiler:hell]].

* GameBreaker: Arrows and thrown objects were this in earlier versions. Before projectile velocity calculations were fixed, elven arrows (made of wood) could pierce through ''steel'' plate armour with little effort.

** Whips (blunt) and scourges (edged) have an extremely tiny area of impact and 5 times the attack force of other weapons. Compared to other weapon attacks, a successful hit by one of these will focus all the weapon's power (and weight) into a single point on the target rather than a wide area. This will nearly always instantly crush (whip) or sever (scourge) a body part, making them the best melee weapons in the game by far.

** Weapon traps are considered to be game breakers by some due to the massive amount of damage they deal. Likewise for cage traps, which unfailingly captures anything that isn't immune to traps, even megabeasts (and if you put a Giant Cave Spider web on it, it catches ''anything'')

* SequelDifficultyDrop: The first Slaves to Armok game was almost entirely unplayable. ''Dwarf Fortress'', while still NintendoHard, is actually playable with a little effort.
* SequelDisplacement: Slaves to Armok Chapter 1? [[http://www.bay12games.com/armok/download.html What]]? Possibly inverted -- at this point, ''Dwarf Fortress'' is popular enough that "people who would never have heard of Slaves to Armok 1 if not for ''Dwarf Fortress'' having that conspicuous 2 in its full title" probably outnumber "people who might have actually played Slaves to Armok 1 if not for ''Dwarf Fortress'' being more polished and popular" by quite a lot.

*** Deadly dust sprays a cloud of poisonnous dust around the beast, which not only can be pretty nasty on its terms, as some Forgotten Beast syndromes effectively cause YouAreAlreadyDead situations, but on top of that, the cloud flings all dwarves around, sending them pinballing into a wall or a pit. Keeping melee contact with this kind of beast is very dangerous, and since the cloud is rather wide, not even your ranged dwarves are safe.

*** Webs can and will lay waste of any melee unit you send against the beast. Indeed, this causes the beast to send a cone of webs at its foes. The attack is unblockable, and ensnares any creature stuck in it, completely preventing them from moving for a few moments, those stuck in a web cannot dodge ''or'' properly block incoming attacks. This gives the Forgotten Beast an ample time to stroll in and give your helpless dwarf an unblockable blow to the head for a OneHitKill. The only non-megabeast enemy to wield such an attack is the Giant Cave Spider, and that attack alone earns it a place among DemonicSpiders.

* ThatOneAttack: Some Forgotten Beasts attacks are known to be particularly dangerous.
** Webs can and will lay waste of any melee unit you send against the beast. Indeed, this causes the beast to send a cone of webs at its foes. The attack is unblockable, and ensnares any creature stuck in it, completely preventing them from moving for a long time. This gives the Forgotten Beast an ample time to stroll in and give your helpless dwarf an unblockable blow to the head for a OneHitKill. The only non-megabeast enemy to wield such an attack is the Giant Cave Spider, and that attack alone earns it a place among DemonicSpiders.
** Deadly dust sprays a cloud of poisonnous dust around the beast, which not only can be pretty nasty on its terms, as some Forgotten Beast syndromes effectively cause YouAreAlreadyDead situations, but on top of that, the cloud flings all dwarves around, sending them pinballing into a wall or a pit. Keeping melee contact with this kind of beasts is very dangerous, and since the cloud is rather wide, not even your ranged dwarves are safe.

** '''Bogeymen.''' The only thing stopping them from being DemonicSpiders is that a decently skilled/strong character can usually manage to kill them; they're still absolute bastards, though, since '''[[FragileSpeedster you can almost never fucking hit them.]]''' Which is why, of course, every single person in the world tells you not to travel alone at night.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: Not the game itself, which, despite all of the horrors that can happen to fortress and adventurer alike, has a fairly standard tone for a medieval fantasy game (even the literal legions of hell can be overcome if you're prepared enough). However, the game's notoriously steep difficulty curve ends up having the same kind of effect on many players, leading to the "losing is fun" mentality; if you're going to fail anyway, you might as well go all out.

* {{Fanon}}: In the first ''Slaves to Armok: God of Blood'' game, Armok is the [[TheMaker creator]] and [[DestroyerDeity destroyer]] [[TopGod deity]] of the game, giving an in-lore explanation for this game's procedural creation of the world, and save deletion. In ''Dwarf Fortress'', he is actually completely absent from the game's setting. He is never listed among existing gods in Legends Mode, no worship of him is shown to exist inside of the in-game worlds, and Tarn Adams had no plans to implement him, saying the game's [[ColonCancer cumbersome]] full name was mostly "[[RuleOfFun for kicks]]". However, this doesn't prevent the players from treating him as being present in the world creation (generally as the TopGod above the others, creating them and the world), referencing him in stories, making their dwarves swearing to Armok, or building obsidian cathedral dedicated to him (often with {{Human Sacrifice}}s), because of the conspicuous "''[[InNameOnly Slaves to Armok: God of Blood]]''" contained in the full game title. One of the most widespread interpretations says that Armok is actually the in-game representation of [[PlayerCharacter the player]], in which case [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential the sobriquet of "God of Blood" is well-earned]].

** Villains quickly became very painful to deal with once they were added in February 2020. The highest members will often never even enter your fortress, instead sending spies through your tavern or even corrupting your dwarves for their plans. They will very frequently make your dwarves try to steal your artifacts, forcing you to imprison them, but often times once you release corrupted dwarves, they will immediately attemp to steal the artifact again! Artifact-seeker guests aren't the worst they can do, since they can also corrupt your dwarves and make them stage a coup and basically start a loyalty cascade!

** In older versions, the so-called "[[FanNickname Danger Room]]" method of military training. Make a small room full of low-quality menacing spike traps. Fill those traps with practice spears. Attach them to a lever or repeater. Station a squad of dorfs in the room and watch their dodging, blocking, armor using, shield using, and weapon skills go up at a ridiculous rate. As a bonus, if any of them actually manage to get hurt, it gives your doctors practice, too! Later versions have significantly increased the injury potential of poorly-aimed practice spears while also increasing the skill-gain done from sparring with other dwarves, so [[{{Nerf}} this is no longer the game-breaking training method it once was]].

** Bogeymen appear to be this, as many players expressed relief when Toady revealed they would only appear in evil biomes from 0.47 onward. Their tendency to literally tear apart early-game adventurers who travel alone was considered especially frustrating, since in some causes you may not have been able to recruit anyone in nearby towns yet your goals were too far to reach before nightfall.

*** Particularly evil biomes have spontaneously rising corpses, which can easily fall into this trope both on their own, and as a result of the fact that all their severed limbs also rise up and create more enemies. The only certain way to kill them is, of course, by either dismembering them or mangling them into a fine paste -- that is, if your combatants don't shit themselves in terror instead of fighting. Worse still, undead from necromancers' towers can carry ''armour and weapons''. Fortunately, they are now vulnerable to magma.

* CrazyAwesome: A trait that is actively encouraged in players. Given that "Losing is Fun", there's no reason not to come up with the most ''completely nucking futs'' solution to every problem, in hopes that your lunacy at least yields a memorable story to share on the [=Bay12=] forums (said solution actually working is just a bonus). After all, getting people to recognize your dorfiness is about as close as you get to actually winning.

* ItsHardSoItSucks: The game has a very high barrier to entry that new players compare to flying a passenger jet with no training or experience. Newcomers are advised to ditch the mentality that losing is a bad thing ([[CatchPhrase "Losing is fun!"]]), but many still are reluctant to try for more than five minutes.

** The announcement that the game is coming to Steam has created two distinct camps. Those who couldn't be happier since being on Steam gives the game a larger audience, and Toady will receive more revenue to keep the game rolling forward. Others feel it's a terrible idea - being free gives the game an excuse to be in it's current shape, but putting a price tag on a game that [[PerpetualBeta has no planned date for even a beta release]], is [[ObviousBeta full of bugs that sometimes dont get fixed for years]] and is overall just [[NintendoHard extremely difficult]] will likely result in the steam release being flooded by negative reviews by players who aren't as forgiving as the current players are.

** Literally with giant cave spiders, as they are of the bear-sized, venomous, web-spitting kind. They can trap dwarves with their webbing, paralyze them with venom, and go for the head for a straight kill. They never run out of web, either. If you ever see a zombie giant cave spider, RUN. RUN AND NEVER LOOK BACK.

** In adventure mode, sneak and find a tile where rocks can be picked up that is as close as you can get to the enemy's vision cone. Then start throwing the rocks until they die (or pass out, at which point you can walk up and slit their throat), without ever being seen. A higher Ambusher skill makes this better, of course.

** Villains quickly became very painful to deal with once they were added in February 2020. The highest members will often never even enter your fortress, instead sending spies through your tavern or even corrupting your dwarves for their plans. They will very frequently make your dwarves try to steal your artifacts, forcing you to imprison them, but often times once you release corrupted dwarves, they will immediately attemp to steal the artifact again! Artifact guests aren't the worst they can do, since they can also corrupt your dwarves and make them stage a coup and basically start a loyalty cascade!