This guide does not aim to explain and detail every little thing and compare stats and tell you what the optimum meta strategy or item is. Part of the fun of gaming is figuring things out on your own (imo). But it's also nice to get some clues to figure out how to get unstuck too.

Quickly before I start the guide; The first question I had when I started a new game was "how do I make my dwarves pick things up?". You can't. unless it's an equipment item and you want them to equip it and not just carry it. You mostly control the tasks of the dwarves, and then the dwarves try to fufill the tasks (building, mining, ect).

So you've started a new game. What do you start with?

Let's start with resources. You get Mountain Lore by exploring. the more darkness you remove, the more points you get. You get Trade Lore by completing quests. You get Coins (copper silver & gold) by doing quests, finding treasures and treasure caves and selling items.

I suggest learning the hotkeys (basically the row of buttons above the space bar: Z-X-C-V-B-N-M) since there a bug sometimes where the screen will scroll all the way down the bottom the cave until you cancel and it gets extremely aggravating after a few times it happens. Most of the time you should hold down shift so you can give multiple of the same order (like when mining a "complex" path that is not just a straight line).

So you're dwarves are in and waiting for a job. what I like to do is explore one side at a time while trying to even the terrain and try to plan where to put my things.

Here I see a bit of uneven terrain and decide to start exploring that way. I forgot to mention that breaking up rocks (mining) has chances to drop resources. you should get a pop up saying what are the chances of what items can drop, on the right side of the screen.

I've reached "the end" of the path, and since I got an easier path down the right side of the cave left to explore I'm going to go that way. I just press M and wait for a dwarf to get there.
Keep an eye out for things you can interact with like these loot backs. just right click them, or left click them and select "rummage" if they are bugged in front of something that prioritises the right click like a cave.
If you find creatures and get in a fight, your dwarves will auto retreat and find healing items (if there is any) automatically.

Part of the fun is planning what will building will go where. I usually like to keep my production relatively close to the entrance, so there is minimal time wasted to go deliver the items for the quests. You could start by building a quarry right away next to the door, but I like to break a bit of dirt first. I'll start breaking things up for some chunks of granite and so on, and make some nice space to build a quarry.

Holding down shift, I started making some dig orders. And I also got my first timed quests while starting. you can go check it by clicking either buttons on the right pannel or on the top left.


You scroll and click on the ones that have a symbol next to them and accept it. I need 3 ingots, so I'm going to go and learn metallurgy real quick. BTW, don't be too much in a hurry to get new buildings, because the quests will just start asking you for the latest things you can produce like swords and stuff, when you are still trying to get your foot down and place your buildings in a not totally random fashion. I personally find this quest system annoying and distracting but the no quest mode is coming eventually.

Technology wise, some buildings go in pair together. You'll want to get metallurgy and blacksmithing ASAP, and put those buildings as close as possible to each other. One creates the ingots and the other creates items out of ingots, and you don't want your dwarves travelling needlessly to make items.
There's also the farm and the cook house that go together. once you've done enough quests to get enough trade lore, you can learn the tech to build living rooms for your dwarves. I usually like to build those above my entrance. I suggest using and sticking to scaffolds until you unlock the elevators and train carts. They only use the basic granite chunks that you should have readily available close by from mining (or just mine some from the terrain nearby. worst case scenario make some from the quarry).

here is an example of one of my caves after I've researched every tech. notice all my dwellings up top.
I tried to change the stairs to elevators but things din't line up properly without having to remake the whole thing altogether...So I started a new game lol. One day I will make the ultimate perfect cave.

You can mine minerals with the same button to mine terrain, but what you really want is a drill. The vertical ones will hold up to 30 ore, while the big horizontal ones will hold up to 50 at at a time. you can also right click and drop the ore, it will just drop on the ground nearby waiting to be picked up, but it's ultra long and tedious.


You will often find some nice stone or metal stuck in veins of other metal.


Before putting down a dril you want to make sure the drill will only drill and fill up on the ore you want, so clean up all the unwanted ore and then slap down a drill. You can check what block will give what metal by overing over it. be careful because sometimes it looks like there is some mixed with it but it's not going to give you what you want. like in thias picture there looks to be some sapphire, but it will actually give iron.

I suggest making sure you always got a basic amount of materials available at all time. using the double arrow will create a kind of never ending building queue. For exemple, you will eventually often get the quests to give 5 axe heads. so I have an order in my smithy to always have 5 copper axe head at the ready. so a dwarf will build the 5, and then when a quest comes up eating up my 5 axe head, a dwarf will automatically go and make 5 new heads when he or she has time.


If you don't choose what material to use, I think the dwarf will just use "the best" material or whatever is the closest available. so if you want 5 iron axes but you already got 5 copper axes ready, he might just use those and make iron shafted copper headed axes (if you had no copper handles waiting). You might need to craft the item you want first before it shows up in the list, like in the example bellow, where I could make any kind of axe heads but it only shows the ones already crafted.


I'm still trying to figure out what metals go best with what, and I have yet to finish a game where I find every metal (because I keep restarting new games to try different layouts and tactics and stuff). I suggest making one of every type you can make and checking which combination is better (you can see the stats when overing over it, or see if it's better, equal or worst when going to the equip equip menu).

Here is a spreadsheet I pulled from the discord, not sure how dated it is and it's probably subject to change anyway but you might like that kind of info (I prefer to figure things out by myself and to avoid metas when they are optional)

This should be enough to get you started. Let me know if you can't figure out something and maybe I'll try to add that part to the guide.

The game is still being developed, so things are suspected to change.
Have fun!

BTW here's a link to the game's discord https://discord.gg/3S6xxPD