> there is no ability to tune the difficulty FWIW, this isn't actually true; you just need to manually apply the gameplay changes that a difficulty setting wou

> there is no ability to tune the difficulty FWIW, this isn't actually true; you just need to manually apply the gameplay changes that a difficulty setting would normally affect. The two main one's I'd recommend are increasing the number of embark points (in init/world_gen.txt#EMBARK_POINTS) so you can buy more starting resources, and increasing dwarves' speed (in raw/objects/creature_standard.txt#CREATURE:DWARF#APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_<x>_GAITS), which just generally makes everything much easier, including increasing your fort's economic productivity to give you better ability to absorb any disaster that do happen. Your overall point stands though; we proudly call it a learning curve^Wcliff^Woverhang for good reason.