Bay 12 Games Forum

Inheritance has been working (mostly) as intended since 40.01. I'm not sure if the difficulty of having a noble expecting fully-furnished royal bedrooms right at the start is an intended mechanic, but there are plenty of possible solutions to their unreasonable demands if you are so inclined.

I'd say a military embark (stone/anvil to make armor and weapons) in an Untamed Wilds, either temperate or warm, level ground would be perfect for this.  Have one dwarf make two weapons, then set two of your 7 to train with them while the smith makes them armor.  The other 4 are on herbalist duty, maybe one on carpenter/wood cutting duty.  Soon as your military is decently trained/armored, send them out on hunting forays against the larger wildlife.  Keep up on the plant gathering. 

If you don't plan on farming, I'd set up some way to get rid of the seeds (creating a dump zone on a refuse pile sounds good to me).  Although, without farming, getting enough useful plants to brew for a reasonable amount of dwarfs will be difficult.  I've never tried to keep an entire fort drunk off of herbalism returns; I know high level herbalists are great, but its entirely dependent on what grows randomly.  Smaller embarks would make this problem larger; go with 3x3 or 4x4 I'd say.

If you do not plan on mining, I'd build a wooden palisade to keep most of the local wildlife out.  In untamed wilds, many things see your stuff, think 'shiny!', then beat your dwarfs' heads in with their own pants.  You will probably want to keep that to a minimum.  Surround your camp with a palisade, and have your military train at the only entrance.

Also, build wooden pots to start with as they hold the same stuff, and more of it, than barrels.

All in all, sounds like a fun (and not necessarily !!FUN!!) embark.  Great for fine-tuning your military building skills, dealing with local wildlife and making the most of surface resources.

** and I do not think dwarfs with butcher goblins without some raw editing.  But with your military exterminating the local wildlife (mmmm, elephants!), why would want to eat Snog Snotpicker?

I had found a nice embark site, right next to a 12-or-so Z level waterfall.  In setting everything up, I put my trade depot in the corner next to the waterfall and the cliff face next to it.

I go about my business of getting the rest of my fort set up and after a time the outpost liaison shows up.  I do business with him and it takes a few minutes for me to realize I've received no notification about the caravan arriving.  Time passed, still nothing.

Seasons passed and the human and elven caravans arrived.

Then I started getting notifications that the dwarves were being bothered by a ghost.  And more ghosts.  Checked my units and found no one missing.

Finally, in doing some construction down at the level of the bottom of the waterfall I realized what had happened.  The original caravan had somehow managed to fall into the river and drown.  Every single one of them, their animals, and all their goods down at the bottom of a raging waterfall.

There's a troll just wandering around my fort. No idea how it got in, since I sealed off the cavern entrances, and it's not even doing anything aside from wandering around. This is so confusing.

Thanks for all the suggestions. So it sounds like you all mostly neglect marksdwarves for the initial phase of the fort?

Also, regarding glass, how do you all manage to get that industry running so quickly with the fuel cost? 3/4 of my worldgens have no bituminous/lignite available at embark, and I find digging down far enough to create magma forges so early is a disaster waiting to happen (magma death, cavern monsters, etc). Wood burning seems to take forever and is totally not worth it except in a major pinch to crank out the first few picks and weapons.

Why not use a pump somewhere?