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DFHack - Dwarf Fortress Modding Engine
Extensions for Dwarf Fortress, including bugfixes, interface improvements, automation agents, design blueprints, modding building blocks, and other tools.
In short, Steam reviewers most often praise “Extensive gameplay-improving tools” (13 of 44 reviews) and “Bug fixes and workarounds” (7). What reviewers agree on ↓
What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Score via Steam as of 2026-09-26.
What the most-helpful reviewers agree on
13 of the 44 reviews raise this.
“Essential. This adds so much to dwarf fortress, it's basically a core part of the game for me. DF Hack is easy to use; it adds its own menu icon top left, and there is a control panel where you can turn on / off the…”
“DFHack is a bit different from the other games I normally play because it is not really a game by itself. It is an add on for Dwarf Fortress that gives me a huge collection of tools for changing, fixing and improving…”
“Borderline required to play the game at times, incredibly convenient and saves you a lot of time and effort, and has really cool features like Stonesense! A 3d isometric map of your fortress! Devs are a godsend to the…”
7 of the 44 reviews raise this.
“DFHack is a bit different from the other games I normally play because it is not really a game by itself. It is an add on for Dwarf Fortress that gives me a huge collection of tools for changing, fixing and improving…”
“This saved my run. Helps in fixing bugs. A must have if you like to play Dwarf Fortress. Sidenote: for more inexperienced players this can help in making the game easier if you want.”
“Def fixes a crapton of bugs that come with the original game. I feel like it shouldn't be necessary in the first place, but I'm glad that it exists <3”
3 of the 44 reviews raise this.
“Essential. This adds so much to dwarf fortress, it's basically a core part of the game for me. DF Hack is easy to use; it adds its own menu icon top left, and there is a control panel where you can turn on / off the…”
“DFHack is a bit different from the other games I normally play because it is not really a game by itself. It is an add on for Dwarf Fortress that gives me a huge collection of tools for changing, fixing and improving…”
“This is a must have for me. Its improvements to selecting goods during trading are alone enough to be worth some coin, but its free!”
3 of the 44 reviews raise this.
“Borderline required to play the game at times, incredibly convenient and saves you a lot of time and effort, and has really cool features like Stonesense! A 3d isometric map of your fortress! Devs are a godsend to the…”
“Essential for DF Steam Version so it gets the same recommendation. Always quick to update along with the base game.”
“Endless replayability with updates consistently expanding on the existing infinity.”
3 of the 44 reviews raise this · 3 of them still recommend the game.
“I play Adventure Mode despite it being incomplete. Still fun.”
“Playing dwarf fortress without dfhack is like banging a lot lizard without a condom. you can do it but it will give you a lot of bugs”
“Def fixes a crapton of bugs that come with the original game. I feel like it shouldn't be necessary in the first place, but I'm glad that it exists <3”
Counted across 44 English reviews (the 44 most helpful) · as of 2026-09-26
“Dwarf fortress, An amazing game with so many levels of complexity. Too much complexity for a simple pleb like myself who has a wife and 3 childs to fed. DFHack, the gigachad came and saved my drowning soul. Now I can See my wife 2 times a month with all the time DFHack has saved…”
— a player, Steam review · 20 hrs played“It's not about cheats. If you want, you can disable any tools that might count as "too cheaty" from even appearing. No, DFHack is vital for troubleshooting and ironing out/working around bugs. Like, let's be real, Dwarf Fortress is a MASSIVE game. It's older than anyone who's…”
— a player, Steam review · 690 hrs played“Essential for DF. I never mod games. DF is the exception, and DFHack has enabled easy and fun mods for years before even the Steam release.”
— a player, Steam review · 14 hrs playedPlayer activity
Monthly average concurrent players. Live data self-collected from the Steam API · history through 2026-08 via SteamCharts.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
DFHack 53.16-r3 released
Please report any issues (or feature requests) on the DFHack GitHub issue tracker . When reporting issues, please upload a zip file of your savegame and a zip file of your mods directory to the cloud
DF+DFHack getting stuck on exit on Windows 11
We've been getting reports that a recent Windows 11 update has resulted in some players having the experience that DF, with DFHack installed, will hang with a black screen when exiting the game, inste
DFHack 53.16-r2
Please report any issues (or feature requests) on the DFHack GitHub issue tracker . When reporting issues, please upload a zip file of your savegame and a zip file of your mods directory to the cloud
DFHack 53.16-r2rc2 prerelease announced
This prerelease is available on the "beta" channel. Please report any issues (or feature requests) on the DFHack GitHub issue tracker . When reporting issues, please upload a zip file of your savegame
DFHack 53.16-r2rc1 prerelease announced
Please report any issues (or feature requests) on the DFHack GitHub issue tracker . When reporting issues, please upload a zip file of your savegame and a zip file of your mods directory to the cloud
Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-09-26.
| Genres | RPG, Simulation, Strategy |
| Player tags | Dwarves · Simulation · Software · Utilities · Moddable · Colony Sim · Building · Procedural Generation · Singleplayer · Resource Management · Management · Pixel Graphics (Steam store community voting) |
| Features | Single-player · Steam Cloud · Family Sharing |
| Languages | English |
| Official site | https://docs.dfhack.org/en/stable/docs/Quickstart.html#quickstart |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: XP SP3 or later Processor: Dual Core CPU - 2.4GHz+ Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: 1GB of VRAM: Intel HD 3000 GPU / AMD HD 5450 / Nvidia 9400 GT Storage: 50 MB available space