How to Attract Immigrants in Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress, in Fortress Mode, you’ll want to be increasing your population higher and higher to build a better and bigger fortress, till it becomes a Mountainhome. Every now and then, you’ll notice that migrants will immigrate to your fortress to settle, and you can put them to work. You may be wanting more immigrants to boost your workforce. Here is how to attract immigrants in Dwarf Fortress.

How to attract immigrants in Dwarf Fortress

When migrants arrive

In Dwarf Fortress, you’ll receive an alert every time migrants arrive. They will spawn on an edge of your map and will beeline towards your fortress, to the closest meeting zone. There they will stay until a job becomes available, or you personally assign them to a task.

Migrants may arrive with children and stray or tame animals, so you will have to be prepared for the arrival of migrants and have spare bedrooms, food and facilities.

Unfortunately, you can’t exactly attract migrants to come more frequently, as they will strictly come once per season. As your fortress grows, however, the group of migrants will get larger and larger, steadily increasing your population.

Even though you can’t directly increase the frequency of their arrivals, you can actually cause less and less migrants to arrive, so you must remain attractive to migrants.

Related: How to make a bedroom in Dwarf Fortress

How to remain ‘attractive’

There is only really one factor to remain attractive: have a low death count. The migration message and size of the migrant group will change depending on how safe your fortress is. If there has been a lot of death, less and less migrants will arrive that season.

If one season has been particularly bloody, then no migrants may arrive at all. The killing of a noble seems to have dramatic effect on the attractiveness of your fortress.

So, make sure your fortress is safe and protected. This won’t increase the amount of migrants, but it will save you from decreased numbers.

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