Dwarf Fortress: 7 Best Starting Skills (2024)

Dwarves are known for being skilled craftsmen, but did you know they can be great cheese makers as well? Dwarf Fortress is all the evidence you need. Each dwarf is capable of becoming a master of a wide variety of skills. These can range from your typical miners to more niche skills like keyboard playing.

RELATED: Things Only Pro Players Know You Can Do In Dwarf Fortress

Starting a run will let you assign skills to your starting seven dwarves. Each dwarf only gets a maximum of ten points to allocate, so creating specialists in a few skills is critical for using their time efficiently. Dwarves with high skill levels will perform their jobs more quickly and create goods of a higher quality. That’s why it’s very important to prioritize the best skills for your burgeoning fortress.

7 Grower

Growers are the lifeblood of your fortress. Everyone needs food to survive, and growing crops is the main source of providing a sustainable source of food. This makes growing one of the most important skills to take on a fresh playthrough. A skilled grower can harvest and plant at a much faster rate and volume. This has a butterfly effect of improving the speed of all food-related industries under it, such as brewing and cooking.

One skilled grower can outperform multiple unskilled dwarves. With the reliability of farming as a source of sustainable food, you should most definitely be taking growing as one of your starting skills.

6 Miner

Mining is a skill that is almost as essential as growing. Dwarves are mountain dwellers, and the only way you’re going to carve out your fortress is through miners. Designated miners will immediately carry out any mining tasks that you’ve assigned. This makes their role very important on a new run, as your dwarves will be without any shelter until they can mine out a place to live.

RELATED: Dwarf Fortress: Best Starting Locations

You’ll likely want to take the mining skill on two of your seven starting dwarves. They will have a lot of work to do before the cold stone can become a respectable home.

5 Mason

A fortress is never complete without furniture, and that’s where masons come in. Dwarves with the masonry skill are given the task of fashioning furniture and structures out of stone. Given how much you will have to work with, masons will never be without a reliable supply of rocky materials.

Important buildings such as trade depots, bridges, furnaces, and wells all rely upon the work of a mason. Defensive structures such as walls also require stone blocks to construct. With so much infrastructure to account for, masons fill an important role as builders in a fortress.

4 Cook

Dwarves are naturally hardy folk, but they can only eat raw food for so long without feeling disgusted. Fortunately, bringing along a cook from the start will keep your inhabitants happy, healthy, and their stomachs full. Turning raw ingredients into meals will effectively increase the amount of food sources that can be eaten. Prepared meals also have the added benefit of lasting longer than raw food.

Aside from just food, cooks can turn any animal fat into useful tallow, a prime ingredient in soap making. Providing your dwarves with a well-cooked meal and a bath will do wonders for maintaining mood levels.

3 Mechanic

The world of Dwarf Fortress is usually a hostile one, so you would do well to prepare your fortress for potential attacks. The mechanic skill is the foundation for creating traps that will deter any invader. Mechanics can build many complex objects, such as pressure plates, levers, and floodgates. With enough traps set up, you will leave any loathsome goblin attackers feeling like they’re in the middle of a Saw movie.

RELATED: Dwarf Fortress: Funniest Ways To Lose

While a mechanic may seem like a niche role, you will certainly not regret picking up the skill before you start.

2 Carpenter

Beds: it’s easy to overlook just how important these wooden constructs are to civilized life. After all, people spend half their life asleep, but no self-respecting dwarf wants to sleep on the floor. Beds are just as important in Dwarf Fortress as in real life. The catch is that in Dwarf Fortress, they can only be made out of wood.

This makes the carpenter skill a bridge to blissful sleep. Carpenters are responsible for creating objects out of wood, such as bins, barrels, and most importantly, beds. Chopping down wood and creating beds should be a high priority for you at the start of any playthrough.

1 Wood Cutter

Wood is one of the first resources you can harvest. It also happens to be an essential resource for your fortress. Given the importance of wood, you will naturally want to have a dwarf start with points invested in the wood cutter skill. Every point spent will increase the speed at which they can hack down a tree. This saves tons of time in the long run and will free your dwarf up for more tasks. Besides beds, wood is also important for things like machine components, ash, and charcoal.

Since charcoal is a necessary fuel source for any new fortress, it makes the woodcutting skill a real priority. Ash is also a useful resource, as it is otherwise hard to acquire and is needed for making soap or fertilizer.

NEXT: Dwarf Fortress Vs. Rimworld: Which Game Is Better?