Dwarves Overview

Dwarves are your workforce. Every mine, refinery, research lab, trade desk and expedition squad is staffed by them. You collect dwarves the way you collect anything precious — slowly, and with a great deal of luck — and then you put them to work across your growing empire.

This page covers what a dwarf is, the one design rule that makes the whole system tick, how you acquire dwarves, the six classes, the trait system, Signature Abilities, and how you assign dwarves to tasks. For day-to-day upkeep (food, fatigue, injury) see Status & Needs; for housing and levelling see Accommodations & Training; for buffs see Ale & Potions.

The One Rule: Stats Live on Buildings, Not Dwarves #

Scalar stats live on accommodations, not on dwarves.

This is the single most important thing to understand about the crew system. A dwarf carries identity, class, traits, Signature Abilities, Health, Fatigue and status. A dwarf does not carry trainable numeric stats. The numbers that determine raw output — extraction level, research level, market level and so on — live on the accommodation building the dwarf is housed in.

That separation creates two distinct game layers:

• Collection layer — finding rare dwarves with good classes, traits and Signature Abilities.
• Progression layer — levelling up accommodation buildings, which raises the shared stat for every occupant at once.

Practical consequences:

• A Miner Quarters trained to a high extraction stat benefits every miner assigned to it, no matter which specific dwarf sits in the slot.
• A legendary dwarf is not simply “a bigger percentage.” Its value is its Signature Abilities — qualitative effects that no building level can ever replicate.
• You never grind a single hero dwarf’s stats. You grind buildings, and you hunt dwarves for class fit, traits and abilities.

The capability Formula #

The game expresses how effective a dwarf is at a task with a single formula. It is used both for production assignment and for expedition squad power:

capability =
    accommodationStat(domain)        # the dominant scalar — grows by training the building
  × classFit                         # 1.0 if class matches the building/task, bonus otherwise
  × traitMultiplier                  # product of the dwarf's active trait modifiers
  × (health / 100)                   # linear penalty as Health drops
  × (1 − fatiguePenalty)             # penalty as Fatigue rises
  + Signature Ability effects        # qualitative, NOT added to the scalar

Classes #

Every dwarf has exactly one class, fixed at acquisition. The class decides which accommodation grants the class-fit bonus, which domain the dwarf excels in, and how well the dwarf fights when defending or on a combat expedition.

Notes on each class:

• Miner — the core early-game class. Scales directly with Mine Shaft and Refinery output.
• Engineer — reduces the credit and resource cost of upgrades. A passive, colony-wide value when housed in an Engineering Bay.
• Scientist — accelerates the research tree; becomes critical mid-game. Lowest combat fit — a reluctant fighter.
• Pilot — improves expedition auto-resolution quality. A Pilot in a squad means fewer manual intervention prompts on routine stages, stacking with your Doctrine settings.
• Trader — applies its bonus to every credit transaction through the market while housed in a Trade Lodge.
• Foreman — a flat global production bonus that compounds with everything else, plus the highest combat fit (1.0). Foremen lead defence squads. Any Habitat counts as a matching home.

Class fit is binary. A Miner in a Miner Quarters gets the extraction bonus; the same Miner in a Habitat does not. A class assigned to a non-matching specialist accommodation still gets full comfort/recovery but only 0.5× of that building’s domain stat.

The exact classFit multipliers are first-pass values and may be retuned once accommodation stat scaling is finalised.

Traits #

Traits are modifiers attached to a dwarf at acquisition. They are fixed at hire and cannot be changed. A dwarf carries 1–3 traits depending on rarity, and trait multipliers stack multiplicatively.

Common Traits #

Rare Traits #

Legendary Traits #

All trait magnitudes are first-pass values. Common traits are deliberately minor, stackable quality-of-life bonuses; rare and legendary traits are meaningfully stronger but never strictly mandatory.

Signature Abilities #

Signature Abilities are the qualitative spikes that make rare and legendary dwarves irreplaceable. Unlike traits — which adjust the capability scalar — Signature Abilities change which outcomes exist at all. They cannot be obtained from buildings, research or ale. Only the dwarf provides them.

Rare Abilities #

Legendary Abilities #

The defining trait of a Signature Ability is that it is not a percentage boost — Pathfinder and Void Caller literally create expedition results that do not exist for a squad without those dwarves. This is why bringing a legendary dwarf matters even when the building stats are identical.

Several legendary abilities (Iron Will’s −20 buffer, Master Supplier’s 40%, Void Caller’s sixth-stage loot) are first-pass design spikes pending balance.

Acquiring Dwarves #

Starting Roster #

Every new game grants three named dwarves: Borin (Miner), Hilda (Engineer) and Durgan (Foreman). They are your first crew on Alpha-1.

Expeditions — the Main Driver #

Expeditions are the primary collection channel. A Rescued Dwarf reward can appear in loot tables from Stage 3 onward. Base rarity when a dwarf reward fires:

These odds shift with modifiers: the Relic Hunter ability and Master Prospector trait (×2 find chance), the Legendary Prospector ability (all finds roll legendary), Discovery sector traits (Ancient Ruins, Anomalous Signals, Derelict Fleet), deeper stages (Stage 4 +5%, Stage 5 +10%), the Lucky trait (+12% tier upgrade), and — most dramatically — galaxy rulesets (a galaxy with a “rare dwarves common” modifier can rewrite the whole table). See Galaxies & Rulesets.

Other Sources #

Base odds and modifier magnitudes above are first-pass estimates.

Assigning Dwarves #

You manage dwarves from the Dwarves panel (roster and status) and assign them where they earn their keep:

• To an accommodation / building — set the dwarf’s home accommodation. The dwarf becomes working and contributes the building’s domain stat (full if its class matches, 0.5× otherwise). This is how miners staff Miner Quarters, scientists staff Science Dorms, and so on. See Accommodations & Training.
• To an expedition squad — add 1–6 dwarves to a squad. They become on-expedition and their pooled capability drives outcome rolls. See Expeditions.
• To recovery — send a fatigued dwarf to a Tavern to rest, or let an injured dwarf auto-route to a Hospital. See Status & Needs.

A dwarf has exactly one status at a time: idle, working, on-expedition, injured, or resting. Only idle, working and resting dwarves are eligible to be reassigned to a fresh expedition (and only if Fatigue allows).

How Count and Quality Scale Output #

Two independent levers raise your total output:

1. More dwarves — every occupant of a building benefits from its trained stat, so adding dwarves multiplies the value of the levels you have already paid for. Accommodation capacity (and the empire population cap, raised by the Dwarf Citadel mega-project) gates how many you can house.
2. Better dwarves — class fit, traits and Signature Abilities multiply or qualitatively transform what a given building stat produces. A legendary Pilot in a Pilot Barracks, plus a few well-chosen traits, can outperform a larger but poorly-matched crew.

The deepest gains come from stacking both with building levels (the dominant accommodationStat term) — see Accommodations & Training for the training system that drives it.