dwarf fortress feature image
Image via Bay 12 Games

How to assemble a squad in Dwarf Fortress

Dwarves together strong.

Dwarf Fortress is the incredibly influential game of building a huge Mountainhome from the ground up. Along your journey, you will face many dangers and horrors; you’ll have to defend your citizens from all assortments of evil creatures and beasts. To do this, you’ll need to assemble squads and get them armoured up as soon as you can. Here’s how to assemble squads in Dwarf Fortress.

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How to assemble a squad in Dwarf Fortress

Assigning and creating a squad

To create a squad, you’ll need to have an appointed militia commander. you can do this through the Nobles and Administrators menu (press ‘n’). Try to choose someone with any relevant attributes, otherwise just pick anyone you deem capable. You will want to soon construct an office and meet the militia commander’s demands, but we can ignore those for now.

militia commander in dwarf fortress
Image via Bay 12 Games

With the appointed leader, you can now create squads. Open up the squad sidebar (or press ‘q’) and click ‘create new squad’. From this menu, you can name the squad, choose the symbol and colours, decide the uniform, and assign members.

You can assign members through clicking on the dwarf head icon. You can have up to ten dwarves in one squad. For larger operations, you will have to give orders to each squad individually or select control numerous squads. Try to construct armour and weapons for your squads, but you don’t have to arm all of your squads to the teeth if their purpose won’t be for heavy combat.

Related: How to fish in Dwarf Fortress

Using your squad

With the squad or squads you want to control selected, look to the bottom of the squad sidebar. You can order the squads to attack, move, patrol, defend the burrow or train. You will want your squads busy with at least one task all the time.

patrolling squad in dwarf fortress
Image via Bay 12 Games

You can alternate squads between patrolling and training, to make sure they improve gradually whilst not letting your guard down. You will need a barracks set up for training.

Keep an eye on Gamer Journalist for more gaming and Dwarf Fortress content, such a how to grow plants.

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