It’s slower than fortress mode but the cool thing is to interact with known entities that you encountered during your fort or you can use it to get a feeling of the world more closely and then make a fort on the area.

I think if dwarf fortress was just this mode you would prefer things like caves of qud which is more polished in that regard but you don’t get the fort interaction you have in dwarf fortress.

I mean the level of interaction is as deep and convoluted as you expect from a mode in dwarf fortress.

Lifted from an old comment of mine:

Also, this was one of the most forlorn pocket worlds I’d ever played through.

The fortress of dwarves I had previously made, succumbed to a necromancer and I had to kill each and every one of them with my adventurer.

He was but a lowly human peasant (with legendary skills), accompanied by a human goddess who rode on the back of a giant hunting cave swallow. She was struck down early on in the game by one of my very own zombified dwarves.

I tried to resurrect her using every cheat I knew, but nothing worked. Angry at the world, I set off alone into the savagery and killed each zombified creature I saw, ignoring the irony of having to frequently resurrect myself in order to do so.

In one skirmish I was completely overwhelmed by goblins, and to my surprise the long forgotten cave swallow belonging to my beloved goddess swooped out of nowhere and tried to help me, but ultimately succumbed to their savagery, though buying me enough time to flee. Even in death, she continued to watch over me.

I craved social interaction, and roamed the world looking for any site that had friendly inhabitants, but discovering only ruin after ruin, leaving me to wander solo through forest retreats, lairs, and fortresses, in a very melancholy fashion.

After a while, I had finally explored the entire map and decided to head back to where I started. I went back to the bloodied battlefield where my companion goddess was overwhelmed all those moons ago, and gathered her remains into my backpack. Together we headed upstream into the mountains, following the river all the way up.

There I buried her atop a mountain meadow, where keas bounded freely. I placed a little wooden statue as a burial marker next to her site, and then built a little house next to it. I furnished it with a bed, a table, a few cabinets and an armor rack. I hung up my weapons and stored away all my other worldly possessions, and finally - feeling at peace with the world - laid in my bed and willingly gave into starvation.

I think the fluffy wambler story is from adventure mode, but unsure. It’s not very…it’s a very free form thing. I like it, but I like wandering around. I did try the new “god gives you a quest” which did have direction, then asked for another quest and…it was the same one. Not to the same place but identical item to get. It’s very veery make your own fun. It does not have a lot of quality of life things. I usually go goblin cause then I don’t have to eat or sleep.