Bay 12 Games Forum

But if you simultaneously drained the magma sea and the ocean into the circus...

I didn't go nuts with this, but boy it works.  Likes tables and microcline- this is not a legendary mason and he's popping out masterwork left and right. 

Likes silver, likes goblets- amazing early-game trade goods- buy out everything good from a few early caravans with just a few bars of silver.  The dwarves then asked for goblets... So I gave them all the profit I could... Got great return.

As near as I can tell, you don't really need them at all.  They aren't used due to bugs.  I have my mil. Sleep in room and give them beds, a chest, rack, and a stand, regardless.

That is a delightfully evil manner of suicide booth.

I approve.

1.  Recruits are essentially useless against basic goblins.  Really, anything under level 4 is asking for trouble.  Don't take newbies against a force of superior numbers if possible.  The goblins can put em in a full Nelson while the other one plays pin the tail on the liver.

I see it go very wrong if they aren't wearing gloves.  My first military encounter went as follows:  6 dwarves run outside.  12 hands are lying on the floor.  One poster above mentioned all the important gear: I strongly suggest full kit or you will lose chunks of those early dwarves.  Why train Dwarves during the easy early years if you are just going to get them hacked up?

2.  Setting the unit to wear metal armor, gloves, and boots is insufficient.  Sometimes they wear o e glove and one boot.  I tend to get dwarves that lose one arm or one foot.  In the equip screen, remove those items, then add a met. Shirt, breastplate, two gauntlets, two. Boots.  Later you can edit uniform templates- for now, stick to manual.

3.  My training trick requires embarking a new fort.  Turns out you can select military skills at embark.  I find two male dwarves, take a couple points of teacher, a bunch of leader, and the rest in axedwarf.  These guys become training beasts.  When the second migrant wave comes, pick two male dwarves and form 2 squads, one leader per squad and one newbie.  Set them up to train. In the same barracks, read other posts to figure that out, and get them sparring.
You'll have axe lords before you know it.   The teacher leader combo is crazy helpful, embark is the only way to get leader and teacher skills reliably for years.

4.  The first three years rely on gates, cage traps, and just be careful.  Airlock, train, upgrade armor to iron if possible (or bronze of course) and do your dampest to get some steel axes.  Iron armor is ok, but steel makes axes that can wreck goblinite armor.

By using this methodology, I can train up squads of incredible dwarves that can walk outside and straight wreck goblins.  It's about time, because my first attempts the goblins just got bored of murder and left...
I took my first squad of 4 dwarves out to meet a Minotaur in the third year.  Level 9 - 15 axe men all

They one shot that Minotaur.  Walked up and lopped off its head.  Whonk.  Those things used to be so tough.

Crossbows are still magical rail guns of death, I haven't figured out how to safely deal with those yet, so I stay cooped up mostly.

At the top of this very board is a link to the complete and utter newbie tutorial.  Those at e great.  He describes using the mayday tile set, which is my favorite. 

I have an associated fly question.

In my previous fortress, I started having prepared food stockpiles without barrels, because of the enormous stacks of prepared food that I can generate.

However, now I have flies.  A lot of flies.

I never had flies in my previous prepared food stockpiles.  So what gives?  Any suggestions?  Is the barrel-less prepared food stockpile no good in 34.11?