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« on: June 02, 2010, 06:09:25 am »
My advice for a newbie package, coming from a newbie and in no particular order:
-For what its worth I use the Mayday tileset, havent tried others but it seems to get the job done and has a nice Super Nintendo type feel to it. The people responsible for getting me hooked swear by it, too. Be sure to explain that unlike pretty much every other game in existence, DF actually alt-tabs well so no trouble running fullscreen and tabbing out to check the wiki (Mayday won't work on 1024 resolution, which many people use, but it looks fine on 1280 on a small monitor cause the text is big...this took me literally several days to figure out).
-Wait a couple weeks for the next patch before really doing it for serious. I've recommended DF to a few people, but with the stipulation that they wait until military is un-fubared because it's a massive buzzkill as is. You dont want to spend all your advising timebasically saying "this is what is supposed to happen, but it doesnt because it's broke so here's a really hacky halfassed workaround".
-Disable invasions regardless of the above. Include instructions on how to turn them on again.
-Add lots more embark points, and tweak worldgen parameters so there are less very hot and very cold regions.
-Don't have surface megabeasts show up until much later in the game--by default they'll show up pretty much as soon as you hit 80 dorfs.
-Speaking of which, tone down to pop cap to something more manageable. 50 might work well for a first stage, again instructions how to bump it up when they're more comfortable.
-Skills wise, be sure to include a proficient weaponsmith, armorsmith, mechanic, and carpenter. The first two are comically difficult to raise, the third is just annoying, and a lot of areas dont have a lot of wood to practice on. I honestly wouldnt put much in mining since theyre going to skill up fast anyway--just make sure you have 2-3 with the skill default-enabled and enough picks. Ditto for all stone and food labors.
-I honestly wouldnt worry about any of the specialized professions. Speaking from experience, a newbie isn't going to care or possibly even know about quality differences at first, theyll just want to know if their guys are making stuff. And by the time they sorta know what's going on they should have one or more immigrant crafters, or otherwise have spammed enough basic jobs to produce one.. Do ensure you have a novice appraiser though, for item values.
-Include lots of steel bars, enough for a couple sets of armor. This will kick-start military, and have them using much better gear than had you just included the equipment raw since your armorer will be pumping out mostly fine quality or better. Ditto on a bunch of coal, since not all maps have ready access to fuel and they only cost 3 per.
-Include massive amounts of food and drink, due to the difficulty of the new farming system. Account for the fact that they'll have 30+ dorfs without knowing why before the first year is up.
-Don't bring the cat unless you mod the raws to heavily reduce their breeding ability. Which come to think of it, isnt such a bad idea...
-Consider using one of the various appointed-mayor tweaks. Aside from fixing a current bug, it's one less thing a new player has to worry about--fire and forget leadership.
-Be sure to explain to them how saving and loading works, and how to reload saves and make backups.
edit: Another BIG thing I forgot to mention, Mayday is not compatible with .31.04. I wouldnt class any of the fixes critical aside from possibly the no fish and shells thing (which you may want to mod so hoof or something works for moods), but its probably another reason to wait a bit until the kinks get ironed out.
