Don't know what Dwarf Fortress is? You can learn more here and here.
Then there's the game's official site and the forum.

Came back after all that? OK. Like a lot of folks, it took me a long time to get into this game; it doesn't just have a learning curve, it has a learning Matterhorn. When I finally fought my way to the top (well, near the top), and realized the Fun that can be had, I was still annoyed with the default "all-ASCII" graphic-display option.

Other people had felt the same way, and created graphic tilesets to depict their fortress's resident manic-depressive alcoholics. Unfortunately, most of them, while certainly better-looking than the original ASCII, still left you squinting at vague little blobs scurrying around the screen. So, as with NetHack before it, I set out to create...

The "Geoduck" Dwarf Fortress Graphics Set 16x16 (Version 2.0)
Updated May 29, 2016

(Pause to allow the ASCII purists to leave..)
For the rest of you.. below you will find graphic sets for all five major Dwarf Fortress races: Dwarves, Goblins, Humans, Elves, and Kobolds; each .bmp file is accompanied by a .txt file. The set is sized 16x16 pixels, and was designed to be viewed on my 1024x768 monitor. It will replace only the five listed races, no other creatures or objects.

For any die-hards out there.. no guarentees it still works with older version of DF, though I haven't removed any occupations as they get developed out of existance.

And yes again, if like me, you just play bog-standard Fortress-mode, you'll never see a lot of these. I have included what Adventure-mode stuff I have heard about. With the Dwarves at least, I have attempted to sorta-mostly match the colors to the original ASCII (and the in-game Stocks screen), keep it all as simple as possible, and make each occupation recognizable at a glance. Did I succeed? I dunno. I like it better than the default. Let me know what you think.

DWARVES DWARF .TXT FILE	GOBLINS GOBLIN .TXT FILE	HUMANS HUMAN .TXT FILE
ELVES ELF .TXT FILE KOBOLDS KOBOLD .TXT FILE
Or if you want them all at once, here's a zip file containing everything.
SPECIAL NOTE I swiped the basic design for my goblins from someone's screen-posting on the DF Forum; I'm probably never going to be able to give them credit by name, so thanks, whoever you were...
Another DF pet peeve of mine is the fact that with the obligatory SCREAMING PURPLE it's hard to tell what a set will look like in the actual game, so below you can see all the sets with a black background. DO NOT USE THE BELOW FILE IN THE GAME. It will NOT work!

If you want to try part or all of the set out, you need to be using some variety of 16x16 tile setup with DF. You then copy/unzip the desired SCREAMING PURPLE file(s) onto your computer's hard drive, saving them under the raw/graphics subdirectory for your Dwarf Fortress game. You then copy the relevant .txt file(s) into that same directory, and make sure they are the only ones in the directory which make any reference to the species in question.

Important note: Each fort you create saves off its own copy of the raw/graphics directory (data/save/regionX/raw/graphics). Be sure and get the files into the directory for the fort you are using, not just the main directory!

Strike the earth!

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions,
please drop me a line at

Version 1.0 (May 11, 2011)
Posted the thing.

Version 1.1 (May 22, 2013)
Made changes to Cheesemakers, Animal Dissectors, Growers, Masons and Engravers.

Version 2.0 (May 29, 2016)
Added various entertainers and scholars, along with Fluid Engineers and Optic Engineers.

Back to the main page.

Dwarf Fortress is © Tarn Adams. Those two "learning curve" toons are © someone or other
All other contents © 2016 Robert M. Cook
Set created with JASC Inc.'s Paint Shop Pro
Last Updated May 29, 2016