In Dwarf Fortress, you will have the liberty of creating your fortress however you want. But there are definitely some designs that trump others. Your fortress will be built up for whatever purpose you want it to serve. To house royalty or the brightest minds or the strongest livers, whatever your fortress is for, it will need to be designed well. Here are the best designs your fortress can have in Dwarf Fortress.
The top 7 Dwarf Fortress designs
The Cube
First on the list of best base designs is one of pure efficiency. The Cube consists of spanning down multiple z levels instead of spreading out largely over fewer z levels. By having your fortress compact to a more cube-like structure, with numerous staircases for accessibility, your dwarves will be more closely knit as they don’t have to travel to the other side of the z level, but just down a couple stairs.
Sure, it’s a little more difficult to oversee everything at once, but your efficiency will increase and it’s real easy to pull off. You don’t need to commit to being a perfect cube, just as long as you span more z levels than you may typically do, you’ll notice that dwarves get to where they want to go much quicker.
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The Sphere
The Sphere is a design similar to the Cube. The same basic principles apply: spanning many z-levels to be compact and efficient. However, the Sphere counts as a separate design for a reason different to efficiency. The added challenge. Vying for a perfect sphere is difficult, but not only will it be rewarding, but also incredibly efficient and practical.
Around the edges of the Sphere, you can house all of your dwarves and leave the centre for workshops and stockpiles. Or, you could have pockets or lodgings at even intervals throughout the Sphere, to make certain dwarves live close to workshops they use.
The Prison
Back to efficiency, the Prison uses cruel and harsh work conditions to make sure your dwarves are working as efficiently as they can. Using burrows and very small bedrooms, or ‘cells’, you can lock your dwarves in their bedroom with a workshop of your choice. The Prison requires some set up to make it efficient and to keep your dwarves at least moderately happy, but it’s a system that works.
Make sure your dwarves are locked in their bedrooms using the ‘burrow’ feature with their workshop, and assign a few stockpiles around them. One stockpile will be for the materials for their workshop, another will be for the goods from the workshop, and the final one will be for their needs, such as food and drink. Dwarves that are not restricted to burrows will be haulers, making sure everything from the stockpiles flow to each other.
Only a small portion of your fortress may be a prison, but those dwarves will be working hard behind the scenes for the rest of your dwarves to have what they need.
Workshop pockets
Okay, the Prison, despite being efficient, may be too harsh, so instead for bubbles of workshop activity, you can build workshop pockets. These are favoured by many members of the community. In each pocket will be one workshop in the centre, and around the workshop will be stockpiles relating to the workshop. this way, each dwarf working in the workshop will have everything within easy reach.
One Workshop Pocket on its own is small, but it has made the list from being very efficient and low-cost and easy, and you can build one for every single workshop. Soon, you’ll have loads of pockets all bundled together, and your industry will be booming.
Anthill
The Anthill is a design that affects the whole fortress, as your fortress will become an anthill. As suggested by @Kang_Zu on Reddit, the anthill is a design that features many chambers, or rooms, connected to one another by long staircases and hallways. This isn’t the most efficient and defendable fortress, but it is cool, fun, and novel.
You can turn your dwarves into a hive of busy bodies as each chamber has a function and production, much like an ant colony. You can even have a chamber for your most important dwarf and heavily defend it. Again, the concept and challenge of this design enabled it to breach the list of the top fortress designs.
Fortress of Fear
The Fortress of Fear design does not regard efficiency or productivity, but aesthetic. Challenging but very cool, this fortress design could be the next one for you. The Fortress of Fear is, at least from the outside, built primarily from obsidian to strike fear into your enemies. But simply having obsidian does not make it terrifying.
What pushes this design into the list, is the feature of having glass display cases of live prisoners or vampires at the entrance. You can chain down prisoners of war and throw them behind some glass for any intruders to have a look at. Aniaas1 on Reddit places their vampires in a silver cell and chain and floods the cell entirely with water to strike terror into any potential enemy.
The Column of History
This design choice is very old and liked by the community, so I couldn’t not add it. Originally proposed by Marcus Aurelius, the Column of History refers to numerous columns that have been engraved each year, almost as if to make an ongoing story of the fortress’ history. There are many ways to do this.
You could have ten columns that, once engraved, go down to the next z-level, so every z-level is a decade of history that will travel down through the earth and be a real spectacle. This is a fantastic design choice that all players can take a piece from. It also reminds us of the inherent story-telling nature of Dwarf Fortress.
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