The most ridiculous patch notes from 10 years of Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress was released into alpha on August 8, 2006, ten years ago today. The exceedingly complicated construction and management simulation continues to be played and much beloved even today—and it also continues to be updated and patched.

The ongoing attention Dwarf Fortress received has resulted in one of the funniest and most entertaining series of patch notes in gaming history. Here are some of our favorite patch notes from the past decade (including a few from the pre-alpha years).

2004

  • Made them care about clothes more

2005

  • Fixed a bug where animals could rent rooms
  • Fixed bug with animals picking out clothes to wear
  • Fixed bug with mules shitting luggage
  • Cleaned up the bear situation

2006

  • Added cat butchery
  • Fixed problem with undead passing out from strangling
  • Made the corpses of small animals that die out of water stop teleporting
  • Made dwarves care if you melt down their masterpieces
  • Stopped soldiers from going to parties
  • Added mouths
  • Added an aperture flag that stops mouths from being gouged out

2007

  • Stopped children from buying shops
  • Stopped happy thoughts from sleeping in beds in amazing dining rooms
  • Fixed bug where all the local rock turned into sky whenever migrant groups were created anywhere in the world
  • Made semimegabeasts get along better with their cave friends
  • Fixed a problem with blood hanging in the air
  • Stopped elves from being pleased with unethical trades

2008

  • Stopped children and babies from joining you on your adventures
  • Allowed dwarves to get married
  • Made thieves and their support groups respect each other
  • Stopped booze food from melting, even though it probably should
  • Made dungeon masters happy with their cloaks and boots again
  • Made all undead respectful of one another
  • Fixed problem with the king coming early and not actually showing up
  • Stopped aerial births
  • Fixed problem causing dwarves to target harmless insane people while making evil creatures spare them and babies
  • Stopped looping dwarves from constantly trying out gloves and boots when they should just pick one and go

2010

  • Alligators have hair and other unintended attributes
  • Rain kills everything it lands on
  • Dwarves given their choice of weapons will choose ones too big to use
  • Humans in Farming houses are naked
  • Tigerman does not have ears
  • Blind cave bears have front toes on both front and rear feet
  • Magma crabs drown in magma
  • Dead dwarves remain in their squads

2011

  • RODENT MAN has no teeth
  • Honeycombs get encrusted with jewels
  • Zombie hens claiming nests and laying "regular" eggs
  • Dwarves come to hospital to Rest without injuries (and also endless tooth surgery)
  • Dwarves play tug of war with caged animals marked for slaughter
  • Serpent Men can Kick
  • ALL primates have front and back legs (with accompanying feet), no arms or hands, yet have fingers, somewhere
  • Rodent men don't use their new teeth to bite

2012

  • Ghost of vampires still drink blood
  • Sleeping on a melting iceberg results in waking up as a demon or other underground creature
  • Boots don't count as shoes, military gets bad thoughts
  • Vampire accuses baby of killing victim
  • Dwarf children die from embarassment at not being dressed at age 2
  • Weasels probably shouldn't be found on glaciers
  • Undead cat can adopt dwarf
  • Vampires who have been scouts brag about murders they committed while scouting
  • Undead dwarf contracted were-chameleon curse

2014

  • Dwarf misses completely unrelated dwarf
  • Fat dwarves eating causes lag
  • Copper coins pass through this boar when thrown at it
  • Zombies start conversation with necromancer adventurer who tries to sleep in their house
  • Dwarf tries to clean missing body part
  • Animals all try to graze from pasture's top left corner, starvation ensues
  • Social skill gains by attending parties is off the charts
  • Animals get attached to clothes they're wearing

2015

  • Animal breeding is prevented if animals aren't "willing to marry"
  • Moon snail men can't punch or see
  • Cats dying for no reason - alcohol poisoning?
  • Seems impossible to satisfy a need for "introspection"
  • Frozen in time; no way to re-enter time continuum
  • Incorrect use of "whom" in elf.txt
  • Nonlethal fall onto upright spike causes unreasonably high skill gain
  • Dwarfs refuse to use picks after unforbidding said picks while traders are present with their own picks
  • Giraffe is trainable for war

2016

  • All animals are described as "Gigantic"
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.