Bay 12 Games Forum

Well that was quick. Moving the military away did the trick. He got a pet dog, though. A marksdwarf kicked him in half, ahahahahaha. Is there anything more pathetic than an ash beast?

He's obviously an early ironclad warship of some kind.

Generate a map with more embark points. 1800 is nice, gives you enough for two maxed out skills on each dwarf, extra picks, and plenty of food to see you through to the first caravan even if you don't produce any food yourself right away.

Pick an easy starting location. Maybe there is a place on your map with no access to Goblins? You wouldn't have to worry about ambushes and sieges while you figure out the other parts of the game. Pick an area with a flux layer, like limestone, chalk, or dolomite. Pick a warm starting location, so things won't freeze in winter. Pick one with running water, but no aquifer. It should have at least some trees. And at least one soil layer, so your miners can practice in dirt first and level up their mining quickly.

You want dwarfs skilled in farming, cooking, brewing, mechanics, masonry, and carpentry. I consider those five skills 'must-have' for making a happy and safe fort. Give one dwarf one point in each of judge of intent, appraisal, bookkeeping, organizing, and negotiating. He/she will be the expedition leader. Your farmer should not have another time consuming skill, give him gem cutting or something else quick like leather working. Nice furniture, good meals, and good booze go a long way in making happy dwarfs. You want to bring 50-60 booze and 30-40 meat in many cheap varieties. Bring seeds, too. Picks, an axe, an anvil, some bags, some ropes, maybe a breeding pair of cats and dogs.

Get a storage area hollowed out in the dirt and make a custom stockpile to hold all your stuff from your wagon, and get it inside quickly. Food left outside seems to spoil pretty fast in a warm climate. Start felling about 15-20 trees. Find the nearest murky pool, not too big, and hollow out an area next to it for a farm. Make it four times as big as the pool. Channel down from above to let in the water once you dig it out.  Build a three by three farm and set it to growing plump helmets, all seasons. Make a refuse pile by your entrance.

Dig down. Make a place for your workshops, get carpentry, masonry, and mechanics going. Build mechanisms. Build beds, chests or coffers, cabinets, and doors for bedrooms for your first seven, a table and chair for the dining room, and a table and chair for the office. Once done with the furniture, make some bins, barrels and cages.

Make a kitchen and still, build food storage and a dining room. Set a meeting area nearby. Cook all your starting food into lavish meals. Then once plump helmets start coming in, set your still on brew, repeating. Make some more bins, barrels, and cages. Dig down some more, build your bedrooms. Make an extra room for the office. Go to your nobles screen, and assign at least bookkeeper and manager to your leader-type. Set the bookkeeper's priority to at least medium, to highest if he has nothing better to do. Assign the office to the bookkkeeper. Make some more bins and barrels.

Make some more bins and barrels. And doors and hatch covers. And more mechanisms.

Start making cage traps in and around the entrance to your fortress. Did you pick a starting location with goblins listed on the embark screens? If so, go bug berserk building cage traps all around your entrance. Build some ropes in your entrance. Do you have new kittens yet? Kittens make great expendable watch-animals. Rope up some kittens. Build a cage to hold excess animals, put any excess kittens into this cage immediately!

When summer comes, build two more farms and have one set to cave wheat, one to pig tails, with sweet pods in the spring. Your fortress should be basically functional and self sustaining at this point. Read the tutorials. Read the wiki. Build whatever industries interest you. Realize you've done it all wrong, start another fortress, read the wiki and the tutorials some more. Rinse and repeat about five times.

If you do all that, in about 200 hours you will graduate from utter novice to complete beginner. Good luck!

Anyone know what happens if you put a stockpile in the barracks and set the barracks to store squad and personal equipment? My dorfs will not use chests or other containers built into their barracks for storage, but I haven't tried making a stockpile in the barracks. I have one right next door, and equipping doesn't seem to take much time. I have my squads set to train 8/10, and to wear their uniform while off duty, so most of them are equipped most of the time anyhow.

@Sphalerite: nice! Changing the names would work.
@prozn_punked: The slaughtering isn't the problem, segregating the animals prior to slaughter and setting up the breeding/milking is the problem. The z menu does not help with that.

I wanted a way to segregate my animals, keeping one or two males, slaughtering the rest of the males, and keeping the females in the open somewhere to breed. I tried making a pit next to my dairy and throwing all my animals in there. Because the dairy needs access to the animals, it was hilariously ineffective, a veritable circus of escaping animals. Tightly closed doors do NOTHING. So I made a bunch of ropes and installed them in my big pit, and roped all my animals. I want to keep the males in cages until I am ready to slaughter them.

Here's the thing, and the reason I have to go to all this trouble: with cows, I can tell in the cage list who is male and who is female. But I can't seem to find a way to tell for other creatures. So I figured, get them all chained, look at each animal's sheet, unchain the males, and then I can tell who to cage because the males aren't restrained. Is that really the only way to perform this task? Am I overlooking some aspect of breeding/milking/slaughtering that would make the whole process unnecessary? This is the first time I have set up this industry, it seems a real pain in the butt, and cheese and meat aren't that expensive from traders.

I've never taken the other option. I assume you just get a random baron anyway at some point? My current Count was the expedition leader. He was perfect for the job, he likes billon and splints, and I've got a ton of tetrahedrite. He also had perfect traits for a leader. Everyone loves him, they make statues and engravings of him all the time, and elected him mayor as well. So I get very few and easily fulfilled mandates, which is nice. But I've never had any nobles immigrate. No Dungeon Master yet. I think I've met all the requirements for Duke, and King, even, but a series of unfortunately timed ambushes kept me from locking the Count in his rooms until the traders left the map. I assume Zefon (the Count) could be upgraded to a Duke, but can he become King, or will the current King move to my fortress?

Basically I guess I'm wondering, what are the effects of answering that first question from the liaison differently? I really want to get a Dungeon Master, but I have this sneaking suspicion that I've made it so no nobles will immigrate.