Hey Urists,

We're back and celebrating the 20th anniversary of Dwarf Fortress this week with a special show, Myth & Magic at and music updates and a patch. While Myth & Magic work is very much underway, we also have patch 53.16 today which fixes a bunch of things. We are also preparing to go to Gamescom at the end of the month to show a first-look of Myth & Magic gameplay that you'll be able to watch at home! Dabu and Simon also released their latest Dwarf Fortress track today.

But first, we'd like to reveal breathtaking new artwork by Thea Kent for the Myth & Magic update featuring a dwarven wizard, a bunch of wild looking creatures and the God of Blood Armok himself:

Release notes for 53.16:

This patch adds some quality of life features, fixes some bugs, and addresses some issues with the extinct creatures patch. A key cause of overindulging tavern patrons was fixed. Dinosaurs grow more slowly and dinosaur people have their missing attack types. Divine objects are visible, generally, and visiting scholars should stop walking off with your books and scrolls. And many more!

General updates

• Fanciful (but existent) creatures like unicorns appear again and have their materials tracked. This also caused some issues with zombies coming back to life (and then dying immediately because of their rotted state.)
• Tavern goers will no longer order a drink from every single tavern keeper in the bar and drink them all, causing them to die of acute alcohol poisoning.
• Tavern keepers will now refuse orders for drinks if the one ordering it is sufficiently drunk (if their personality allows.)
• Dwarves will exercise self-control and not order alcohol from tavern-keepers when drunk (if their personality allows.)
• Saves can be sorted by most recently played now.
• Ordered potential memorial slab engraving jobs by urgency and added some coloration.
• Visitors should no longer steal fortress library books (or other fortress items.)
• Disabled "be with family" need until isolated residents have ways to visit, be visited by, or contact distant family.
• Added confirmation for changing or clearing hotkey recenter locations.
• Added various missing attacks to the extinct creature people.
• Changed growth rates for various extinct creatures.
• Changed egg size and clutch size for various extinct creatures.
• Stopped caravan from bringing food when it wasn't needed due to seed and drink overcounting.
• Strengthened effect of unconditional surrender.
• Stopped player messengers from being given conflicting diplomacy goals (such as declaring war and making an alliance.)
• Stopped dwarves from being trapped in guildhall skill demonstrations when they have unmet social needs.
• Strange mood dwarves will no longer make equipment types from outside of their civilization.
• Fixed broken xml export for historical negotiation events.
• Wilderness creature type number further depends on the size of each region.
• Click the bottom stockpile button now goes directly to adding a new stockpile.
• Gave recenter information to building destruction and toppling announcements.
• Stopped tantruming dwarves and others from targeting farm plots for destruction.
• Announcement and report recenter buttons should properly close their menus again.
• Added description to top of burrow menu.

Graphics updates

• Procedural weapons and armor images appear, and procedural weapons appear when held (worn armor will have to come later.)
• Stone short sword should now appear as held item properly.
• Made skill blocks of administrator candidates easier to parse.
• Improved display of game load/worldgen errors.
• Quern and millstone cursors appear properly when placing them.
• Displayed cauldrons properly in night troll lairs.

New Song: Myth & Magic

Inspired by the Myth & Magic update, Dabu and Simon Swewer have just released one of two new Dwarf Fortress songs for this year. A song about a dwarven wizard experimenting with the amazing, destructive powers of magic...

We're celebrating the 20th anniversary of classic Dwarf Fortress with a special show. Join Tarn and Zach as they play the first ever build of the game from 2006 and reminisce about the olden days. It’s been a while since they’ve played the build and it’s very unstable so who knows what will happen? They are also hosting the Beyond Quality Awards, recognizing the devs and community members who have contributed throughout the years.

The show starts today at 11am PT/ 2pm ET/ 7pm BT on the Kitfox Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/kitfoxgames

See you in the next one

-Alexandra