Bay 12 Games Forum

They did indeed stop coming out, and I was able to build a floor over the pit.

Typically I grab the first couple of immigration waves and draft them so that I don't have legendary dwarves sparring with recruits.  Have a peasant forge the first group of swords, and use the crappiest metal available - silver is especially good.  Dwarves that are already champions in wrestling will get up to legendary with weapons very quickly.

By the time you've got a squadron of champion sword dwarves (~3 years), it won't matter what they're holding.  They'll slice anything to bits.

It's either a complete no-brainer or completely impossible.  A haunted glacier game would end before the first spring was over due to lack of water and vermin to eat.  If you could find a way to attract migrants, it may be possible - you might refresh the population often enough that a few lucky dwarves could survive off of food stolen off the caravan mules until the next wave arrived.  I don't know how you could draw the migrants, though.  I haven't had any.

Turns out these guys are hardy - I've got 5 left and it's been 3 years.  They're all ecstatic for some reason, despite living on water and bugs and sleeping in the dirt.  I guess they're pretty fond of each other.  My muskox population is thriving, too - 23 and counting.

Tetrahedrite.. native copper.. silver.. native gold.. small pocket of aluminum.  That's what visible from the surface and around the walls of the chasm and magma pipe.  No flux and no iron ore so far.  There is quite a bit of copper, though.

I just threw a sacrificial miner and mason down to try to wall off the demon pit.. they are now barbecued.

Depending on the size of your farming operations, you could need as many as 4-5 stills and 4-5 kitchens.  If you're at that level of production, though, you'll be building surplus very quickly, which can be more trouble than it's worth.  You'll also probably need 1 dedicated food hauler for each kitchen and still.  I usually build a large room adjacent to the farms to house the food, and set up food processing operations around the perimeter of the room.  It ain't always pretty but it works.

1 moderately skilled carpenter for every 2 stills is a good idea.  If they're novices you'll need 1 per still.  Stills use a lot of barrels.  If you want to build anything else, like beds, you'll need more.

Build your corridors wide and put masonry and mechanics wherever there's stone.  You can also put them in the dining hall, since it's a good idea to dig that way bigger than you need it anyway.  My last fortress had 80 dwarves and had 5 masonry workshops and 4 mechanics.  (Mechanics get useless quickly, though - once you have all your traps and floodgates in, they're not good for anything anymore.)  Mostly my masons just engraved though, because I tend to build my fortress very large immediately and outfit it with furniture as soon as I can, so the masons run out of things to do.  You can get dabbling engravers to legendary surprisingly quickly.

If you want a lot of marksdwarves / crossbow traps, then a couple of fisheries can be a good idea to have a source of bones.  I've never needed more than 2; 1 is usually enough to keep two craftsdwarves busy making bolts.   I usually set compulsively useless dwarves to fishing before the fortress guard shows up.

I never have more than 1 jeweller, 1 butcher, 1 tanner, 1 loom, and 1 clothesmaker.  There are all the other miscellaneous workshops as well- alchemy, ashery, dyer, etc.  I've personally never found it necessary to build any of them.  I don't go for seige machinery either, so I can't really address seige workshops.

Metalworks can be large or small depending on your emphasis.  I never bother starting metalworking operations until I hit magma, then I build two smelters and two forges.  If you go the military route you may want more to keep the equipment coming.