It definitely has a learning curve at the start, if you’re still interested the new version has a tutorial in-game now, I can’t vouch for how good it is because I’ve never used it though. There’s also plenty of quick and easy tutorials online, I learned the basics from this one by Peridexis but it’s rather outdated by now, the wiki has some recommendations on more up-to-date ones.
Decided to go back to Dwarf Fortress after a long while, I’ve been basically re-learning the game and trying some !!fun!! stuff I’ve never done before. Funnily enough I think I just built my most successful fortress, outside of a really nasty tavern fight that resulted in the death of two children, one dwarf and their cat (the drunkard literally grabbed the poor sod by the tail and smashed it into a statue to death LOL), everything went rather smoothly. Lots of forgotten beasts passing through the caves, one got in while I wasn’t looking (lol) but was dispatched easily without casualties.
Thinking about building a fort on a volcano next, see if I can do some crazy magma wizardry.
I don’t even know how I feel about this. On the one hand, it’s great we’re moving away from 4 which was always a shitshow to begin with, on the other hand I have no faith whatsoever 5 is going to be even on par with 4.