"A long, long time ago in a ga...no wait. Somewhere around here I mean, in this very mountain, the first dwarves entered this world. The dwarves had unlimited ambition, and the talent for whatever they set their minds to. They dug through mountain, built wonderous artifacts and structures, and had a courage of steel to face the fiercest of monsters...and win. On their way to glory they encountered other races such as the nimble elves and the mighty dragons. With their help soon the dwarves had spread far from their homeland and created a vast kingdom. But that was a long time ago and I was merely ancient back then. In the end, it was due to change. They came from the unknown regions of the north. Mages. The dwarves had never seen anything like them. They wielded powerful energies called "magic" and brought with them terrible creatures that seemed to hate the very world itself. Even so...the dwarves offered their hand in friendship. But the mages had no such intentions. They struck out against the dwarves and soon the great dark magic war had begun. The dragons flew to help the dwarves, but the mages were so powerful that they managed to strike the dragons from the sky destroying them. The elves fled the lands to let the dwarves fight for themselves. The noble dwarves fought long and hard for their survival against the ruthless mages and the terrible destruction they brought in their wake. With no one to help, the dwarves were pushed back. But soon, the dwarves will rise again and they will build a civilization worthy of their stolen glory."

W - move camera front (alt: move the mouse to the top edge)
A - move camera back (alt: move the mouse to the bottom edge)
S - move camera left (alt: move the mouse to the left edge)
D - move camera right (alt: move the mouse to the right edge)

Z - zoom in (alt: scroll up)
X - zom out (alt: scroll down)
Q - rotate camera to the left (alt: hold down the scroll button and move the mouse)
E - rotate camera to the right (alt: hold down the scroll button and move the mouse)
Left SHIFT - free look this is to get 360 degree view of the area where your cursor is
R - move 1 floor up (alt: + sign on the bottom right of the HUD)
F - move 1 floor down (alt: - sign on the bottom right of the HUD)

B - build menu use this to build beds, tables, chairs etc
V - pipet use this when you want to locate an item (like wallpapers) in the build menu
H - open Hemfort menu use this to order new dwarflings, increase your population limit and buy/sell resources with hemfort
I - hide in-game interface
L - quest log shows the Main Quests and the King's Quests
P - speech log if you missed a line or two of what your prince was saying, you can consult this speech log
T - open tech tree use this to choose which techs you want to be researched
SPACE - toggle pause (alt: click the pause button on the bottom right of the HUD)

1 - dig order clicking a block after pressing this button will send a digger to dig the block
2 - interact order certain quests will require you to interact with some items
3 - move order use this to move items around
4 - sell order sell items you no longer want or need
5 - teleport order in cases where you need your dwarves at a certain location immediately, such as military dwarves, you can teleport them; 5 dwarves at a time

when your clan grows too large to search individual dwarves, use these shortcuts to locate them:
F1 - go to prince
F2 - go to military
F3 - go to digger
F4 - go to crafter
F5 - go to researcher
F6 - go to worker
F7 - go to dwarfling

CAMPAIGN

This is the story mode where you will be given quests to finish each level. Completing levels will unlock previously inaccessible areas.

According to the story, your father gets tired of your unproductive way of life and kicks you out to make yourself useful. You find yourself ruling a small clan and setting up a settlement of your own. Right when you think you are done, you find out that your father has planned for you to conquer all the dwarven cities lost from the war back from the mages. You will travel from area to area by obtaining the mage crystals that acts as a key to inaccessible areas.

CUSTOM

This mode is like a sandbox mode. You can customize your world according to your preference.

• Event Occurence - the amount of secret rooms generated in your settlement
  
• Resources - how much resources are generated for your dwarves to dig
  
• Safe Mode - checking this will prevent items from being spawned in your settlement
  
• Build Enemy Items - secret rooms will have enemy-created items
  
• Activate Event Room Indicators - checking this will show the location of secret rooms as ???
  
• Level Size - the size of your map
  
• Difficulty - the difficulty at which you want to play
  
• Influence Tech - checking a box will unlock all research tech in that branch

Prince of Dwarves
This is you. You are supposed to prove to your father that you are a responsible prince who can handle his own clan. You don't actually do the work; you got workers for that. So what do you do? You give out orders to each of your dwarves as well as ensure your health and safety. Why? Because the game ends when you die!!!









King Father
He is the king of dwarves as well as your father. At the beginning of the game, he kicks you out to prove yourself worthy of your title as prince of dwarves instead of filling your belly day and night. Throughout campaign mode, you will be keeping contact with him and updating him of your progress.

Dragons

A race who went down fighting alongside the dwarves against the mages.

Nimble Elves

A race who abandoned the dwarves when the mages waged war on the dwarves.

Mages

How do you spawn dwarves?

On the bottom right of your HUD, you will see the Hemfort icon. From there you can spawn dwarflings from Hemfort. They come one at a time at consistent time intervals. So if you need military dwarves right away, you better have the dwarflings ready because waiting for dwarflings to spawn will take some time. By the time your dwarflings are ready, the enemies would have already come close to your throne room and destroyed a few items on the way.

The Hemfort icon window not only allows you to spawn dwarflings but to increase your spawning pool level, which in turn increases your maximum population limit.

How do you get rid of dwarves?

If for some reason you need to get rid of your dwarf/ves, you can use the SELL option (key 4) and click on the dwarf you want to get rid of. Now, why would anyone want to sell their dwarves away, you ask? If for instance you have too many diggers and you are in need of more workers, you would have to banish an existing digger and spawn a new dwarfling. This is due to the fact that you can't change their specialization once assigned. This also means that you will be selling your level 10 digger and spawn a level 1 dwarfling, which would then be your level 1 worker. So, plan out how you will be assigning your dwarves. Levels lost is time lost.

Dwarfling
They are fresh from the spawning pool. Until you assign them a specialty, they will remain a dwarfling and continue to level up by simply eating, sleeping and satisfying their curiosity. I would suggest that you spawn your dwarflings as early as possible so they can start leveling up right away. By the time you need to assign your level 10 dwarfling, you would have a level 10 crafter, instead of level 1 crafter. Unless you have an urgent job to be done, it's advisable to keep them as dwarflings because the moment you assign them a specialty, they will stop leveling up unless they are doing their assigned work. However, do not spawn dwarflings more than you can support! Dwarflings will consume food and take up bed space!

Specialization requirements (click on the green + icon):
Digger: 50 food
Crafter: 50 food
Worker: 50 gold
Military:50 food
Scholar: 50 tourmaline



Digger
Diggers are what their name says, they dig dirt blocks and mine ores. They are essential to your clan as you won't get anywhere without them. The higher level they are the faster the dig. There are things you need to keep in mind when assigning tasks to your diggers:

• when you task them to dig downwards, they will fall into the pit and you will have to manually place a ladder for them to climb up. Otherwise your level 30 digger will just starve and die.
  
• when you want them to dig upwards, you can only dig a block directly on top of the dwarf. Any block that is diagonally up (like the upper block of a wall), cannot be dug without placing a ladder (next to the lower block of the wall) for your diggers to climb.
  
• when digging into a room inhabited by an enemy, make sure you have your warriors ready because diggers are quite vulnerable and can be killed in a very short amount of time. For maximum protection, I would suggest to teleport them out to safety and teleport in your warriors.
• sometimes your diggers are tasked to dig far from the comfort of food/beds and could potentially die on their way to the food table or bed if it's too far. What you could do is build a table and a couple of beds every now and then for your diggers. If you are running low on gold, simply move some of your beds around. By doing this you actually make your dwarves more efficient as their hunger and energy bars won't deplete as much from traveling between food/bed and digging site.

Worker
Workers tend to your plants (food, wood, ale). You may assign 3 workers for each fertilization stone. Ideally, you should put the fertilization stone at the middle for maximum coverage (as it reaches as far as 5 blocks across) and have the plants surround the stone. This is done because your workers are unable to walk across plants to get to the other plants. Therefore, there must be no obstruction for all your plants to be accessible. If you place a plant at the middle soil, your workers will not be able to harvest that plant and is deemed useless. Some plants are more expensive yet yield an equal amount of food as the other cheaper plants. Be sure to check the multiplier icon on the top right of the plant.

Things to keep in mind:

• Plants ripen almost right away and will keep your workers busy day and night. I find that some workers tend to slack though and when that happens, you aren't yielding the optimum fruits that you potentially could. Try replacing that worker with a new one.
  
• Your workers harvest count goes directly to the food icon on your HUD, not to the nearest table. Therefore you can have all your workers near your center point and simply build tables everywhere else. Tables will provide food to your dwarves despite not having fertilization stone, plants and workers nearby.
  
• Remember to keep track of your food and wood count. Your workers will continue harvesting even if your storage capacity is at full. When this happens, build more storage boxes or sell wood back to hemfort for some gold.

Crafter
Crafters build EVERYTHING on the build menu for you. They are the ones that make use of the ores mined by your diggers and wood harvested by your workers. More items are buildable as your researchers unlock more techs. I generally keep only one crafter as he generally could handle all the building assignments for the clan. There is not much to note about the crafter except for the fact that he also needs to replenish his hunger and energy bars.








Scholar
Scholars research tech points for you, which you can use to unlock available techs from the tree. You can build them standard research table which you can replace later with an upgraded version for faster researching process. I tend to keep one or two scholars to do my research. Like the crafter, they are low maintenance and you could simply leave them to their research most of the time. There are four tiers on the tech tree with each tier requiring more tech points to unlock.



Military
Military dwarves require a good amount of your attention. If you want them to level up, you need to keep training them by crafting dummies (unless you are in constant battle with an enemy, which isn't normally the case). They also gain XP by destroying cobwebs but you don't have an unlimited amount lying around so don't count on it. Military dwarves can further specialize as they level up. However, upgrading to a specialist would require resources ranging from food to dragonforce.

Scholar

• Researcher
  A smarter dwarf that will grant you more research points
  Research: Scholar Specialisation
  Minimum level of dwarf: 10
  Resources: 400 tourmaline
  Pre-requisite stage: Scholar
  Pre-requisite to: none

Military

TIER 1:

• Warrior
  
  The militia of the settlement, semper fidelis
  Research: none
  Minimum level of dwarf: 0
  Resources: 25 food
  Pre-requisite stage: Dwarfling
  Pre-requisite to: Fighter or Spear Thrower

TIER 2:

• Fighter
  Melee specialized warrior
  Research: Military Specialization
  Minimum level of dwarf: 5
  Resources: 25 iron
  Pre-requisite stage: Warrior
  Pre-requisite to: Berzerker or Shieldbearer
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Spear Thrower
  Throwing spears like a druid bringing pain from far away
  Research: Military Specialization
  Minimum level of dwarf: 5
  Resources: 100 wood
  Pre-requisite stage: Warrior
  Pre-requisite to: Grenadier or Marksman

TIER 3:

• Berzerker
  Forsaking defence in search of the greatest offence, the berzerkers often lead the charge
  Research: Sword Training
  Minimum level of dwarf: 10
  Resources: 150 food
  Pre-requisite stage: Fighter
  Pre-requisite to: Slayer
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Shieldbearer
  Tank unit with lots of health
  Research: Sword Training
  Minimum level of dwarf: 10
  Resources: 25 titanium
  Pre-requisite stage: Fighter
  Pre-requisite to: Immortal
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Grenadier
  A powerful but slow ranged unit
  Research: Marksmanship
  Minimum level of dwarf: 10
  Resources: 25 obsidian
  Pre-requisite stage: Spear Thrower
  Pre-requisite to: Musketeer
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Marksman
  The crossbow is deadly and has great range
  Research: Marksmanship
  Minimum level of dwarf: 10
  Resources: 100 iron
  Pre-requisite stage: Spear Thrower
  Pre-requisite to: Sniper

TIER 4:

• Slayer
  Incredibly powerful melee unit
  Research: Sword Training
  Minimum level of dwarf: 15
  Resources: 10 dragonforce
  Pre-requisite stage: Berzerker
  Pre-requisite to: none
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Immortal
  High HP and high defence gives this unit its name
  Research: Sword Training
  Minimum level of dwarf: 15
  Resources: 25 dragonforce
  Pre-requisite stage: Shieldbearer
  Pre-requisite to: none
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Musketeer
  This advanced broomstick deals heavy damage with decent range
  Research: Marksmanship
  Minimum level of dwarf: 15
  Resources: 25 dreadstone
  Pre-requisite stage: Grenadier
  Pre-requisite to: none
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Sniper
  The sniper can take enemies out from afar
  Research: Marksmanship
  Minimum level of dwarf: 15
  Resources: 50 titanium
  Pre-requisite stage: Marksman
  Pre-requisite to: none

• Mole
  
  
• Spider Worker
  
  
• Warrior Goblin
  

• Energy
  When you hover over your dwarf, you will find energy, hunger and experience bars. The energy bar slowly drains up as time passes and dwarfs will have to rest on a chair or sleep on a bed to refill it back up. Take note that the travel to and from the bed will drain a bit of energy as well. Therefore, it is wise to keep a bed near work area to minimize the energy lost in travel.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  If in case you don't have a bed or all of your beds are full, your dwarves will have to sleep on the floor. This means they are not as rested and happy as sleeping on a bed. Beds are cheap and easy to make so provide enough for your dwarves.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Hunger
  Like energy, hunger is being drained by the second. All dwarves need to eat and your dwarves can die of starvation. To refill their hunger bars, you must first provide a farm of food using fertilization stone and food plants. Have your workers tend to the stone and build tables around your settlement so dwarves can access stored food. Food have the same capacity as your storage capacity. So, if your food level is at max, then you are either producing food at an excessive level or not building up your storage. As a precaution, I would advise not to let your food level drop below 500. Keep those bellies filled!
  
  
• Happiness
  
  Your settlement's happiness is determined by the number of decorations built around your settlement and items that produce happiness (smiley face icons). Based on experience, I don't find happiness having much impact on anything. It is, in my opinion, one of the useless factors in this game. You can have an angry settlement that still functions quite well or a very happy settlement that doesn't really yield any noticeable bonuses. It is for this reason that I don't invest on decorations on campaign mode. But if you still prefer to keep that happy meter up, feel free to do so.
  
• Storage
  
  Storage is determined by the number of chests or cupboards you've built. Different storages gives different amounts of storage increase. Food, gold and wood tend to max storage capacity so I would recommend increasing your storage capacity continuously. Your spawning pool also requires a good amount of gold. This means, you would have to increase your storage capacity enough to save all that gold.
  
  When storage is maxed out for a particular resource, all incoming resources of the same type will be discarded. For instance, if your wood is at max and your workers continue to harvest wood, those new resources will not add up to your storage even if you increase the storage capacity 10 seconds later. They are gone for good. To tackle this problem, make sure you sell excessive resources and use that gold to buy a rarer resource. This way no resource is lost or wasted.
  
  
• Population
  
  Population is the number of dwarves you can have in your settlement. To increase your dwarf count, simply spawn a dwarfling from the Hemfort window. To increase your max population, you would need to upgrade your spawning pool.
  
  Spawning Pool upgrading requirements:
  Level 1: 0 (max population 10)
  Level 2: 1000 gold (max population 17)
  Level 3: 2500 gold (max population 24)
  Level 4: 5000 gold (max population 31)
  
  
• Gold
  
  This is officially called "wealth" but I like to call it "gold" out of habit. A lot of games uses gold currency and wealth looks a lot like a heap of gold, so why not? Wealth is obtained when you mine out silver, gold or platinum ores. You may also obtain them from selling non-dwarven items from discovered rooms. On top of this, you are able to sell wood and other mined resources back to Hemfort for wealth.
  
  
• Food (extra tips)
  
  Food is scarce at the beginning and because of this, I tend to build a lot more food than wood plants. When you get more advanced food plants that generate double or quadruple the amount of food, you can then replace them with wood plants or log trees or ale - whichever you prefer.
  
  
• Wood (extra tips)
  Wood is necessary for many items on the build menu. On top of this, wood can be your major source of income. When my food supply is stable, I increase my wood production and sell them back to Hemfort for money. This generates a fair amount of wealth and far more reliable than other sources of income.

Resource blocks are found throughout your settlement and can be dug out by your digger dwarves. You have an unlimited amount of resources due to the fact that you can buy them from the hemfort window. Notice that on the bottom left of the window, you will see SHIFT x10. This means that if you hold down SHIFT button, you can buy or sell items x10 at a time (than without holding down the SHIFT button). This can be also useful if one of your resources maxed out the storage capacity. You can convert that item into gold and buy a different (preferably more expensive) ore with it.

• Dirt
  Dirt is the most common block you will find in your settlement. They technically serve no purpose other than act as walls or barriers from undiscovered areas. They don't go into your storage but digging these will give your dwarves exp points.
  
  
  
  
  
• Fertile Soil
  Fertile soil can be found from single block at a time to multiple chunks at a time. Having them close together makes an efficient farm as you can maximize the power of a single fertilization stone. This is the soil where food, wood and ale plants grow.
  
  
  
  
• Silver
  Silver is a common ore found in your settlement that gives wealth when mined. They will give you 25 wealth (which I generally refer to as "gold") at a time.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Gold
  Gold is another ore that will giive you wealth when mined. Unlike silver, you will receive 50 wealth from mining these.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Platinum
  Platinum is the rarest form of wealth and are typically found in the lower layers of your settlement.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Stone
  Stone blocks are found common around your settlement. They are useful resources for building items around your settlement such as tables and/or beds. They are renewable sources in a way that you can buy them from the hemfort window.
  
  
  
  
• Tourmaline
  Tourmaline are rather abundant and are used for upgrading your dwarflings to scholars. You will also need tourmaline to upgrade your scholars to researchers.
  
  
  
  
  
• Iron
  Iron is about as common as tourmaline and is used in most military builts and upgrades.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Marble
  Marble is one of the rarest, if not the rarest, resource found in your settlement. They are so hard to comeby that I often find myself buying marbles off from Hemfort than digging them out. They are mostly for aethetic purposes and they are easy to spot with the full on white color in the midst of the other darker shades.
  
  
  
• Obsidian
  Obsidian is one of the less common and resource you can find. They look like black rocks protruding from the gray rock blocks.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Titanium
  Titanium is the more expensive and powerful version of iron as titanium is needed for upgrading higher tier military dwarfs. I used to confuse them with platinum but got used to it eventually.
  
  
  
  
  
• Dreadstone
  Dreadstone is one of those dark resources with dark power emanating from them. They are easy to spot as well due to the bright purple color of the block.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Dragonforce
  Dragonforce is the most expensive resource you will find in your settlement. Diggers will only find dragonforce from the lower levels. Dragonforce is required to upgrade your military dwarfs to one of the higher tiers.
  
  
  
  
  
• Undigium
  Apparently, undigium was invented by dwarves yet they themselves are unable to to dig through it. Undigium serves as the wall or barrier that restricts the player within the settlement's coverage. You cannot mine it even if you try. The block will hover red instead of the usual yellow color if you attempt to dig it out.

Influence

You gain influence points by finishing the main quests and additional points for finishing the optional king's quests. When your influence bar is filled, you can unlock permanent advantages for your prince such as starting with a level 20 prince you can fight alongside your military dwarves.

Inventory

This is where your collected crystals are displayed. Most crystals are guarded by a powerful mage.

Hemland: red crystal

• Hemfort - this is place where the prince (you) grew up and where the king (your father) resides
  
  
• Hemland - the last city controlled by dwarves after the Great Mage War
  
  
  
• Vanaheim - the continent on which dwarven cities lay

• Where are the saves located?
  C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Zeal Game Studio\A Game of Dwarves
  
  I once reformatted and reinstalled my computer and lost all my saves because I thought I had my game saves on steam cloud. I thought wrong. So backup your files, fellas!

(coming soon)


Part 1: Hemland