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[Sutremaine]

It's now the third year, and I think my third industry will be leatherworking. I have rather less leather than I'd like for training purposes (those bins add up quickly), but it'll be good padding for the civilians, who have finally gotten enough quivers between them to be fully armed. It's so nice seeing that first thief or snatcher shot down where they stand, although in this case the dwarf ran out of bolts and ran off, and I sent in the military to finish the job.

It's rather tough not being able to put out even a couple of important pieces (I even bought wooden armour from the elves), and the first goblin ambush turned up in the summer. I lost another fresh recruit to a zombie. Her child was snatched shortly after the start of a rather anaemic siege, and she chased the snatcher right into a zombie and held out for a little while before being smashed in the head. The snatcher escaped, which in this situation is really for the best. But the two remaining original soldiers are getting good, with improved stats and enough teaching skill to make replacements train faster. This is the second adult death I've had, with a baby of a military dwarf (who died shortly afterwards) making three deaths total. There are now 15 adults, and I still haven't quite finishing hauling the wood in from where I clearcut the swamp in the first year.

Anti-Tower measures seem to be working. The barracks are right in the only entrance, and even if a necromancer should dodge past them the 1-wide corridors leading to the refuse pile and food pile (aka dead vermin central, thanks to a peregrine falcon the elves brought) are full of pastured dogs. On a lighter note, a snatcher had the misfortune to be discovered right on top of the autumn caravan, and had his teeth kicked out by a horse before having his skull kicked in by the merchant. Damn Melbil, you scary.

I did some number-crunching on the challenge. If I've calculated right, you need nine years to get all the mood workshops available, which can be reduced to seven if you retrain any migrant Mechanics or Glassmakers before they can mood. Every other industry has multiple professions attached.

Looks like it's time to send my militia dwarves out to go round up some animals for butchering and processing to leather.

Tricky. You can't do anything but live training without beds, weapon racks, or armour stands, and fliers will waste a lot of time.

[Sutremaine]

Autumn went badly. The goblin squad that turned up made a right mess, killing the two new recruits and my trader (my first founder death ). After that there was nobody left in the fortress with even Novice social skills, and I didn't realise that the traders were getting annoyed with the offers until they packed up and left.

So I stole all their stuff by deconstructing the depot. Jeez guys, a bunch of dwarves (and dogs) died right in front of you, cut me some slack! I did manage to trade a few things before the session went downhill, but I don't think that counts for enabling a new industry. The new armour and weapons are nice, and may keep the newbie alive for long enough to skill up a little. I'm starting to run out of dwarves here. On the plus side, having walled up the entrance, nothing is going to bother me until late spring, possibly late summer if I decide not to let the elves in.

[Sutremaine]

So Spring arrived, and the elven caravan got hit by an ambush. But since none of the traders got hit (thanks to some modding that permits extremely powerful bows to elves, plus natural archery and bowman skills of Accomplished. Remember that for later), I took down a section of wall to let them slip through. Trading happened, and I let them out and rewalled. But there were a couple of corpses and such on the surface that I wanted to grab, lest they become raw materials for the next necromancer to stop by.

The first batch of collection went okay, but then an ambush squad popped up. I set a burrow order to call all the dwarves inside, but one insisted on staying behind to fire on the approaching goblins and got hit. I sent out the melee squads to try and save the dwarf (founder, miner, bowyer, gemcutter...), but he died before they got outside. By that time it was too late to disengage, so I sent everyone out in an attempt to drive the squad off. Then another ambush... and another... and another.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So now I'm down to one child who escaped up the stairs into the pasture area, and there are ten melee goblins, five crossbowgoblins, and three elite bowelves on the map. Somehow I think this fortress is done...

[Callista]

Ouch! That there is some epic carnage.

BTW, you would have gotten a new industry from this caravan, since they successfully entered and traded with your dwarves, because you get the new industry when the first successful trade happens. That you deconstructed the depot and stole the goods after that would mean that the next year's caravan wouldn't bring a new industry, because this year's caravan didn't leave successfully.

[entity0000410021940710090]

Here is the results of my attempt at this challenge.

Year 1
Giant Kea's descended on me the second I arrived stealing a rope, an axe, two picks, and a dozen other things. Otherwise my start went well.

I embarked on what I thought was low vegetation and no trees. Turned out it has no vegetation and no trees. I dug down to the first cavern to get some trees and all I found was a winding, muddy, desolate, cavern. Great. I delved deeper finding a cavern with water and trees. I immediately set forth making a cistern so I could get water after I sealed the cavern off.

A few deaths to dehydration. Not the best sign...

I chose Woodworking as my first advancement. How could I not? I needed barrels badly, not to mention chairs, tables, caskets, bins, and so on.

Year 2
Close to starving and dying of thirst. Butchered most of the animals including many the last influx of dwarves brought. Unfortunately the 20 extra mouths were more than the animals could provide. I eventually set half my population to fish and half to hunt. A giant wolverine kill not long after with no loss of life was a blessing (the only bolts I had were scavenged from above ground. I think the previous caravan was shooting at something). A caravan arrived soon bringing a little more food. The Woodworking industry has a second benefit: the bowyer. I had a dwarf churning out bone bows constantly so I had something to trade.

Foreseeing having nothing to trade next time and running out of resources I set out to create several massive walls in the caverns giving me an area to harvest wood and plants from.

It was at this point I also realized the cavern flora was not spreading. I thought the massive muddy cavern would sprout into life but it has not. Apparently in no vegetation embarks it does not spread? Or does it no longer spread at all?

I choose farming as my second industry. Hunger is a problem I would like rectified.

Year 3
A troll attack, followed by a group of troglodytes, followed by several failed moods (2 going berserk), followed by a couple babies being kidnapped, put the fort close to a tantrum spiral. The military was miserable but I knew I would need them to be skilled to make up for my lack of weapons and armor so they got no breaks despite the risk. Also had several deaths from dehydration. Not sure why as they are not blocked off, I have a water source, and I have 100 drinks. Despite all that the walls were completed. Unfortunately, the area was not large enough or rich enough. Migrants continued to pour in replacing the recently deceased and 30 babies were born swelling the population to 100.

I choose Masonry as my third industry. Mechanics and Leatherworking were tempting but I needed tables, chairs, engraving, and other mood improving things before the tantrums escalated. Oh and more coffins. Lots of coffins...

Year 4
More failed moods, more kidnapped babies (one dead from the berserked dwarf). Finding iron ore all over the place and set forth finding the magma lake. I found the third cavern and wow was it full of plants and trees. When I found the magma my 2 legendary miners also released it and when I gave them orders to dig out away from the lava they ran straight into it. Right.

I began an attempt to make a 30 z-level massive lava piston. This would partly be my undoing. I accidentally mined into the third cavern making it impossible to block off unless I stopped making the lava piston. Dwarves would injure themselves or fall to their deaths, and the long distance and terrible mining order would mean they would run over, mine one tile, run for awhile to get to the next one tile, then run back to the fort. Other not too threatening cavern creatures also injured and hassled the dwarves now and then and it was too far for the military to patrol.

My first Forgotten Beast showed up. A humanoid made of salt. It appeared in a cavern I blocked off.

First siege as well. I sent my army of 30 dwarves out and walled them out of the fort. They died very quickly. This does not bode well if I can't even kill a couple goblins with 30 dwarves that have been training for 2 to 3 years.

Second Forgotten Beast, a gigantic hairy dimetrodon.
Third Forgotten Beast, a huge feathered turtle with noxious secretions.
Both fortunately in walled off cavern sections.

More food issues. Still not producing enough. Not enough seeds, not enough plants to gather, and low on animals again. Fortunately the siege ended in time to trade with the Dwarven Caravan. The constant ambushes were a nuisance but the traders kindly wiped out every ambush.

I choose Mechanics for my next industry. I needed traps or something, I wanted traction beds, and bridges would be better then hoping some mason would build a wall before a goblin or something entered the fort.

Forth Forgotten Beast, a Minotaur, above ground this time, and before I was able to build a bridge. He killed most of my militia, especially the strong ones, then spent a season slowly punching a dwarf to death. This confused me. Apparently he took an (alpaca wool right glove) from one of the felled dwarves which gave him non-lethal boxing gloves. When he tired I sent the remaining and new militia out and killed him. So there you have it. Armoring your dwarves in wool can be useful if the enemy takes it and uses it after killing your dwarf.

Year 5
Fifth Forgotten Beast, a towering Titmouse in the unsealed cavern. My unarmed and inexperienced militia punched it to death after a quarter of my population was decimated.

Sixth Forgotten Beast, a gigantic blob composed of ash in a sealed cavern.
Seventh Forgotten Beast, another minotaur, above ground again. This one unfortunately did not take a glove from a felled dwarf and killed another quarter of my population before a hunter got a lucky shot off and killed him.

Successfully traded with the Dwarven Caravan and decided to go with Smelting as my next industry. Soon I would have Metalworking and would have some properly armored dwarves. Unfortunately the Giant Kea's returned stealing all the best weapons from my many dead dwarves still outside as well as a stack of steel bolts worth 1200 dwarfbucks I just traded for. Fuckers!

Eighth Forgotten Beast, another giant blob.
Ninth Forgotten Beast, a quadroped.
Both in the sealed caverns.

Half my of my dwarves are mining the lava piston. I know that one of these many many Forgotten Beasts will eventually spawn in the unsealed cavern.

Year 6

Siege! Followed by another siege (missed the other one leaving). Somehow a Pikeman got into my fort and killed a dozen dwarves.

A couple seasons of nothing while I hide from the siege. This lava piston is taking forever. Lose a couple dwarves now and then from them falling to their deaths. Damn them! I have 10+ dwarves haunting the place now.

Remember the second Forgotten Beast, a gigantic hairy dimetrodon? I do not know how but apparently he crossed caverns and went to my unsealed cavern and promptly wiped out my fort. The beast shot webs everywhere and I wondered, can you make forgotten beast thread out of them?

And my strength was broken.

Thoughts:
It was a pretty cool challenge. I love challenges as they force me to adapt and change play styles otherwise I get bored rather easily. This one is brutal because there is so little you can do but wait and all the while the enemy is getting stronger and stronger. I really made it harder by picking a location with no vegetation (I recently watched "Single Pick Challenge! Terrifying Embark, 7 Peasants, and a Pick!" and was inspired to embark in a less than perfect location for once). I think Leatherworking or Fortress Defense may have been a better early industry to survive longer but once you get Wood, Stone, and Farming it looked like it might be easy. Might.

I was really tempted to get Animal Husbandry for the broken cage traps (are they still awesome?) but decided to try something different.

Is it normal to get that many Forgotten Beasts? I thought you got one every one to three years after a certain year but this seems excessive, or is it just my world, or because I was not killing them that the game thought I wanted needed more?

[AutomataKittay]

Is it normal to get that many Forgotten Beasts? I thought you got one every one to three years after a certain year but this seems excessive, or is it just my world, or because I was not killing them that the game thought I wanted needed more?

They don't comes on fixed timetable, I'm pretty sure they runs on siege or ambush algothrim, which's roughly once a season. And they runs off siege trigger, too, so it's past a certain amount of dwarves (80 in default setting, IIRC ), or wealth ( Around 1 million? I don't know exactly )

At least I've gotten a few years where they pops up season after seasons on rare fortresses with a lot of surviving forgotten beasts and titans!

You probably should've explored the caverns more, there're sometimes passenges between caverns. I'd guess it's your world because that's still a lot, which means a lot of them survived or you was good at raising wealth.

[CatkinsFTW]

Callista, awesome challenge.  I've completed it a few years late due to missed caravans.  The list of locked industries encouraged some fun choices as the years went by.  I think that this challenge should be added to the wiki list of challenges.

I made one change to your rules while I played.  I moved pasturezones, hives and nest boxes to animal husbandry.  It made animal husbandry a little more desirable, while farming is still essential as it unlocks the entire food industry.

If I played it again I'd make Brewing the 15th industry, restrict the Masonry and Carpentry labors until their industries as unlocked and allow one industry to be unlocked at embark.  This changes little except you can only build wood/stone walls after you have carpentry/masonry.  I think that the easiest(/luckiest if playing randomly) first choice is carpentry to get beds and buy booze.

Lastly, I like your idea of adding Burial (coffins and slabs) as its own industry.   

[Halceon]

I'm SO doing this.

Update.
I just finished my first year. Embarked on a heavily forested brook, 3x3. Bringing along pretty much the default equipment, only no anvil and lots of surplus food.

I began deforestation and trench digging immediately. I've set up a walled area with an open paved trade road leading to one side of the map. The road has moats on both sides for safety.

For embarking deep in a forest, there are surprisingly few animals around. And with me accidentally overproducing booze, I ran out of food very quickly. Construction projects were halted as dwarves rushed to gather whatever plants they could find.
Still haven't had to butcher my 2 yaks. They're hanging out in the overground meeting area and staying fed that way. I should pen them somewhere, to make sure dwarves don't trample valuable grass.

I grabbed Woodworking as my first tech, because doors, man. Doors, beds, tables, chairs, armor stands, barrells, bins - so many vitally needed things. I can finally force my dwarves to not sleep in the grass. And the liason has requested splints with highest priority. I think I'll be ok.

Until elves inevitably show up and complain about deforestation. I've cut around 500 trees in the first year alone. Yeah.

[Jerbot]

First time poster, I've been playing for about 3 months, so still new. This challenge looked like fun so I gave it a shot. After failing once 3 years in, I'm going to try again, it really challenged me to use things I normally ignore and it made the enemies much more challenging.

My first try went like this:
I decided to do the industries randomly, and I also embarked near a tower for the first time ever, so I was eager to see how different it made things. I embarked with mostly standard stuff, no wheelbarrow or anvil and lots more booze and food. My site was a cold, 3x4 with a brook and a volcano.

Year 1: I mostly spent my time digging a basic layout and then mining some of the ore veins or clusters that showed up, like aluminum and native gold. I also dug out my magma channel for my forges/furnaces, and since the brook was not melting, I redirected some magma to a pool under the brook to melt the ice. The traders came and I traded aluminum ore for food and booze (running low already) as well as a crossbow and a few bolts and all the barrels I could get. I rolled stoneworking as my first industry, which I thought wasnt too bad. All the basics but beds barrels and bins.

Year 2: I had a mason making obsidian statues constantly, and that gave me plenty of trade value for the caravans, although weight was a slight problem with the elves. No ambushes, just thieves and snatchers, although while the humans where visiting, my refuse stockpile went crazy and attacked, but was easily defeated with no deaths. The necromancer must have been around? although I could not find him in the units screen or even scrolling around the map. First time with a tower, like I said so I'm not positive how all that works. Dwarves came, rolled leatherworking. ugh. Up until this point I have had only 2 moods, one I was hopeful about gave me an artifact millstone...and the other went insane.

Year 3: Up to about 60 dwarves, I was trying to control my wealth very carefully. Food and booze take lots of micromanagement without the ease of farming, but with caravans visiting and statues to buy their food with, I was staying afloat.I have never done much with leatherworking but i had to armor my militia with something, so I started in. I had my first deaths, a founder first of all followed by a handful of random dwarves. The group died during an ambush, which was nonetheless quickly defeated by the human caravan guards. My founder died when a weretortise showed up as he was mining near the volcano. I HATE were creatures. They either kill then flee right away or they un-were and all I get is a dead human child... My next industry was farming!

Year 3: My population went up around 100, and farming put an end to all my food/booze needs. It was nice to put that behind. I got an ambush of speargoblins which my militia handled with 3 deaths and immediately after my refuse went nuts again. I still could not find any necromancer. But after that was all taken care of I finally got a message about the necromancer, who was apparently charging into my fortress by himself. I deputized a few more squads and pummeled him to death. Does that mean my undead problem was gone? Anyway, my fortress fell to a combination of goblins and my own stupidity... which kind of sums up the ends of most of my fortresses.

As I seem prone to do, I misjudged the z levels when opening another magma tunnel and magma began pouring down the mountain. It wasn't too bad and I had it contained, but I couldn't get the brook to melt, even with magma underneath. I could not figure it out, then I remembered that I had temp turned off to see if it would affect fps much. I restarted and turned it back on...instant forest fire swept across the map. Then as I was trying to figure out that, two ambushes popped up and began wiping out militia and then civilians, who for some reason were running amok outside...I abandoned with the gobs chasing the survivors around inside my fortress, and 75% of my dwarves dead. I had a total of four moods, only one successful giving me the millstone.

Moral of the story...magma is !!FUN!!

GREAT challenge, I will be trying again, not sure if I'll do the tower at the same time, but i liked the random industries. I'm sure that the military is really the key to surviving because goblins become much more challenging when you are minimum (with great luck if random and huge sacrifice either way) 2 years away from significant metal armor production. Or you could try traps... anyway, this challenge was so fun it made me write my first post!

[sprawl15]

Gonna try this in a bit, but I'm going to dump a few embark points into a few beds and pointy sticks (training spears) to free up the nearly default requirement for woodworking as the first profession.  Beyond that, I'm running with the theme and taking very, very little on embark (including skills) and embarking to as savage a jungle as I can find.

I will probably tweak it a bit.  I'm going to de-link animal husbandry from anything, take it as my first pick (and embark with some mechanisms and cages for traps), and allow myself animal pens.  I'll also use it as an alternate prerequisite for food production (considering farming as agriculture).  Long term, I may merge smelting and metalworking (since they're useless without each other) and replace smelting with 'fire', a prerequisite for any workshop that uses fire (ashery, wood burner), the metalworking and glass/clay working industries, and any meals more complicated than easy at the kitchen.

I'm thinking nearly aboriginal above ground jungle dwarves with pet animals and sharp sticks farting around for a year berry picking / eating raw meat / taming the wild, then learning how to cook, then learning how to make pots, then branching out into more complicated crafts (animal husbandry -> cooking -> crafting means three caravans before even masonry or woodworking).  I'm also going to restrict my wall building to the making of specific dwellings out of wood (like houses or crafting areas) until I unlock masonry/woodworking.  Figure they can make wood huts but not stone parapets.

EDIT: Never tried to take mechanisms on embark before, but it turns out you can't do that.  Oh well.  I'll cheat a bit and make a mechanic's workshop/some mechanisms to match the cages I'm bringing, then never use that dwarf for mechanics later when I learn that industry.  I think I'm also going to save making wells and other water related things for the agriculture industry, as part of irrigation.  Other than that...here we go!

[sprawl15]

Not even one month in, my militia commander who is standing around training spots a capybara, charges it and they both fall into the river, where he drowns.  Ugh.

[Tevish Szat]

So, I'm attempting this.

WORLD GEN:
Tons of Volcanos and Good, low savagery, moderate temperatures, and wow, the world took three hours to gen to year 889, still the Age of Myth.

Strategy:
I'm going to look for a forested volcano with a soil layer: asking a lot, I know.  Sand is a plus, clay (especially fire clay) is a plus.  Bring beds, take either crafts for obsidian short swords if I have lots of obsidian, or stoneworking to rush mechanics for a magma flooder to annihilate my enemies.  If I can't get a volcano, Obsidain, or both, this will be far harder.

Pre-Embark: Looking at legends we have slabs and necromancers (One slab was "Newyouths the Dead Death", another "The Profane Terror".  One Necromancer was an olm-woman.)  One dwarven civ has a vampire for a queen.

Embark: I found an odd shaped embark with some trees and some vegetation (Enough, I can only hope), a volcano, a river source, and mostly good to boot, then DF crashed.  I'll have to find the lousy place again, or maybe gen a new, smaller world with even more volcanos.

[flabort]

So we can try this challenge on any world, on any embark?

Does the world have to be freshly genned (I'm thinking of trying on a world with a few failed adventuring attempts)?

There don't have to be any conditions on the embark location (doesn't have to be savage, or good, or evil, or anything?)?

And can I only earn one industry per trade?

[Gentlefish]

Maybe as mountainhome you should be able to unlock all trade. I mean, it's the king we're talking about.

[Tevish Szat]

Dear Diary: Today I learned that you can't embark with beds. 

I take two herbalists, two woodcutters, two miners, a dedicated expedition leader, wooden axes instead of the real thing, no anvil, an extra pick, and a whole lot of brains.

The embark is a piece of work.  The good news is I *just* need stoneworking and mechanics to trigger an eruption, at least of minor scale: I can't pressurize the volcano without either metal or glass.  The bad news: not a lot of obsidian.  Just a couple z, amidst the caverns.  Well, if I'm not quarrying for rock short swords, I can skip crafts and hope for no moods.

Year 1, Spring:  Lots of digging.  Get an incidental lead on tree-chopping and plant-gathering
Year 1, Summer: Created a lot of miasma when mis-designating my mass dump, hitting a prepared wombat brain.  7 migrants, but two were children that may or may not be sacrificed to the volcano god.
Year 1, Autumn: got 3 real dwarves... and the eight children of the pair of fishery workers.  if I lay off farming, there WILL be sacrifices to the Volcano Gods.  A thresher is also possessed before the caravan, and thus is shortly to die.  I trade some silver bolts a migrant brought for Plump Helmets, and have a tough choice between wood and stone.  I take wood, and build a carpenter's shop
Year 1, Winter: Thresher goes melancholy.  Maybe she'll jump into the volcano.  she has no friends, so I'm fine.  My stonecrafter with a wife and two children moods.  Should have taken crafts...
Year 2, Spring: The stonecrafter goes stark raving mad.  No elves in this world...  TON of migrants, most of them even more children.  Population is 68, with 31 kids.  I'm going to kill them all when I get mechanics.  I tell every dwarf in the fortress to gather plants and pick the surface bare.
Year 2, Summer: A child withdraws from society.  Good riddance.  He goes berserk and takes out a dog, though.  New migrants, all working adults.  Population: 75   I need crafts to stop failing so many moods and Masonry>Mechanics to deal with the swarm of locusts, or sieges,
Year 2, Autumn: Snarchers, and more migrants.  we've broken 80.  I almost wish the snatchers would take a few kids.  Woodcutter goes fey...  Again, I'm confronted with taking crafts to save lives, or going for the fortress.  The fortress will survive, I'm taking Masonry this year.
Year 2, Winter: I start cranking out cobaltite blocks to make a grand wall.  However, I need food production BADLY: my pop exploded thanks to those blasted kids.
I burrow all the kids on a platform that hasn't been finished, planning to drop it into the volcano once it's complete and has all the young on it.  they walk up there, catch on fire, and burn to death.  The volcano god must be pleased.
AMBUSH!  I conscript the entire adult population of the starving, dehydrated fortress, which helps.  However, my population is tantruming and going insane in addition to starving.
Amidst it all, a kid goes melancholy and jumps into the volcano.
I decide to breach the volcano and let the fortress flood with magma.  The smoke clears up the miasma... and the dwarves.  Somehow dwarves that are on fire are able to wade through magma.  People go melancholy and walk into the fire.  After about a month, only the ‼Dwarves‼ standing ,some of them content, in the former dining room remain.

Your Settlement has been abandoned.