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[PatrikLundell]

Good to hear from you, Pseudo! This is your hell hole, after all

Farms: I actually build a lot of 1*1 farms. In my normal games I use this to cut down on the over production of food by disabling them gradually. Here I use it to balance the two crops during a dual crop season.

Brewing is not that critical. You can wait well into the summer, but yes, getting it going is good.

I build a permanent butchery (there are peafowl after all, and immigrant animals if you go that way). A short distance away from the butchery I dig a hole (with a staircase two tiles away, connected at the bottom only, unless the digger climbs out, in which case I have to dig a hole to let the digging continue).
At the bottom of the hole I build an atom smasher, with a wall behind it for good measure (hence 2 tiles to the stair). Immediately after butchering I order the dumping of all 3 garbage items (although it's probably safer to dump the hair first, and take the cartilage and whatever the last thing was after the hair is done). All dorfs are given the tanner profession, as well as the spinner one, and I don't butcher unless most of the dorfs are idling to do tanning and dumping immediately. I've spun immigrant alpaca foal wool without incident.

I've done one axe and two beds, but I've considered a cage instead of the second bed.

Caverns: I only venture out when there are reasonably benign creatures about. To increase my view, I've carved a fortification in the tile I'll dig away when I open my entrance tunnel.

Killing baddies: I've managed to kill titans without problem using cave-ins of built constructions. The immigration/trade tunnels i dig are deep enough to allow first a natural cave-in, and later on engineered ones.

Given the scarce access to metal, I'd use cobaltite for a hard floor, but I don't really care. My garbage smasher hole ought to keep the garbage down long enough for the bridge to do its magic.

Personally I won't do melting exploit, but you're going to be limited by fuel anyway...

You can't dig enough to let the caravan/immigrants in immediately: you're having to hope you're lucky enough to enter the map close to one of your entrances or get through without rain (I used 4 entrances the last time, and that's the maximum number I'm going to risk, given miners will take every chance to channel from the surface [I think I stopped such a suicide venture when the bugger rushed north towards the entrance at the north end of the map to dig down on the tile opening up the entrance at the extreme south end. There was a straight shorter path below ground, and the only reason the bugger could try that was that everyone was too busy to pull the lever to close the north entrance off]).

Provided you entrance tunnels are long enough for bleeding to show up and you can seal them, I think they're worth the risk.

You've missed something regarding butchering: There are no plump helmets (probably intentionally), so you'll have to rely on eggs and dwarven sugar for solid food unless you butcher.

I'm eventually going to secure the caverns, unless I get undead campers there first. If I can get in 2 or 3 good runs it should be possible to cut down all the trees, and that would open up for a cave-in divide-and-conquer approach, should sealing during safe periods not be sufficient. Also note that there is enough soil for a tree farm.

My approach is to use wood when I can (cages), glass when I can use that, and thereafter the best metal I can get for my future militia, using leather/bone initially for the single untrained "militia" early on (used to scout the remote corner of the cavern, and try to kill of any undead small things that make it through the pressure plates, which hopefully should not be needed when the tunnels are covered by bridges that can be activated by a lever as well as the plate).

I've never had a caravan caged creature die on the way in to the depot. I suspect their starvation meter only starts ticking when you buy them. I'm quite sure the death (and the tallow) was caused by the hellish weather.

I think you should set up a "hospital" zone, get them hauled there (I actually did get someone stitched up!), and then remove the zone. Those who wander off will hopefully recover, while those who remain should be moved to an atom smashing "hospital" for observation and probable disposal. I didn't think of removing the feed/water job. Thanks for that!

vjek came in while I wrote:
My thought on cavern access is to build an airlock with doors to slow critters down, a lever controlled atom smasher instead of the cages I usually use, and engineer a cave-in only when needed (I can take my time, since the victim is trapped in the airlock). The problem with a gremlin stun trap is that you don't have any cages to trap the critter in (until you get more wood), and FB's are stun immune anyway. I don't think stone drop traps are of much use, and that's about the only thing available without metal, glass, or wood.

A surface structure is rather useless, and probably deadly. It's a lot better with underground tunnels with surface access, and that's quite dangerous as it is. I've tried to build an umbrella cover in a 3*3 embark with the NE tile being neutral savage ocean (the rest sinister glacier). The goo raining down wasn't lethal (blisters all over), but it's still impossible to get the morons to path through the safe areas and stand in safe areas while building. I built a 12 (I think) tile high tower and built bridges out, with new bridges built from lower towers under the cover of the higher ones. Might have worked if I hadn't built under the edge of the cover, but one tile in from that (builders insisted on standing outside the burrow on high cost traffic tiles to build more often than not). However, on this embark it seems getting hit doesn't matter. What matters is the temperature calculation that hits everything on a "surface" tile while it's raining if I've understood your description correctly. A tile covered by a roof is still surface...
I've never encountered a wild troll using any equipment, only goblin siege weapon type named trolls [i.e. Snodub, Lasher troll, etc.] (metal weapons, but no metal armor, probably metal shields when appropriate). No cavern dwelling animal people I've encountered have used metal (wood usually. Don't remember if they wore clothes, nor if they used bone weapons). This means metal comes from caravans and occasional miner, woodcutter, or hunter immigrants. Also note that caravan guards tend to have both metal weapons AND armor...

[Pseudo]

Huh. An interesting exploit / quirk.

If you fell a tree on the lowest level of the map, it'll make a bottomless pit (well, it just shows "open space", but it acts like one).

The lack of plump helmets isn't really that bad.  Just annoying. Also: don't forget about eggs.

I haven't been having any trouble digging up to the surface: just make sure that you have a door right next to the ramp and forbid it as soon as a ramp is dug, and never order >1 ramp dug at a time.

[vjek]

Huh. An interesting exploit / quirk.

If you fell a tree on the lowest level of the map, it'll make a bottomless pit (well, it just shows "open space", but it acts like one).

The lack of plump helmets isn't really that bad.  Just annoying. Also: don't forget about eggs.

I haven't been having any trouble digging up to the surface: just make sure that you have a door right next to the ramp and forbid it as soon as a ramp is dug, and never order >1 ramp dug at a time.

Well, THAT'S interesting (the bottomless pit) something fun to drop the undead into, maybe? heheh. 
Cave wheat can also be querned/milled into dwarven flour, which is a solid food for cooking. (biscuits and the like).

[PatrikLundell]

Hm, I'd forgotten about flour. I never do any of that, since everything brewable goes into booze, normally, except plant threshables.

Sounds like you're using the same workaround for surface passage as I do, Pseudo, only I use drawbridges rather than doors (or rather, I use both, so slow lever pullers can be compensated for by doors. Tactics update imminent!).

I've seen the pits (bluish tiles) but thought it was just a another graphic glitch (there are a fair number of those for me, with these tiles). I think I'll plug them, eventually (once I manage to get into the cavern. My discovery breach caused a crundle to race up the stairs and seems to be camping, and the rest seem to be camping in the cavern below). I managed to block the racing crundle with a floor at the top in the nick of time, so there were no injuries.

Another interesting find is that a reanimating hide (that I managed to kill with no injuries) resulted in TWO hides that could be tanned. It was my first draft animal, so there shouldn't have been more than one tanned hide in the stockpile afterwards (apart from me seeing two hides prior to tanning, both an original on the workshop, and one I'd killed). I've seen a similar kind of replication with reanimated hair, by the way.

[Pseudo]

How did it get slain? Did it get cut in half, by any chance?

I can't be bothered to have a lever hookup per ramp, so I just have them all feeding into one access tunnel with a drawbridge. It does mean that if/when a building destroyer shows up I'll have to rebuild all those doors, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

[PatrikLundell]

I didn't check the battle report, but given that a pick probably was used I doubt it. Also the animated part was in the leatherworks next door (5 or so tiles away).

Given that I have 4 tunnels (roughly one in the middle of each side), I need those drawbridges anyway. I'll consider upgrading using your method at a (much) later stage. A large number of doors is just production (counting towards the target, I guess), and I'll still keep my current 4 tunnels anyway.

The camping crundles in the cavern seems to be a blessing in disguise. They didn't move when I breached the cavern, and I've partially closed off one cavern entrance (as in: wall along the bottom one tile from the edge with a drawbridge in it and a wall on top. Haven't done anything about the space above, though (ran out of blocks as well as time, as the caravan was due). I've harvested a neat pile of wood (60+ logs?) before turtling up again, and, by the way, I've dug out a tree farm, but it'll take time before that will result in any trees. However, given the floor holes, the cavern is a finite tree resource (and would have been anyway, since it's muddy rock, and the mud disappears when you cut down such tress).
Mmm. Everyone to get their own (low quality) bed, in their own bedroom (once I get to digging those out).

6 immigrants during the summer, all survived, no animals.
Just before the caravan arrived the rain started. They made it into one of my tunnels before croaking, but some are missing (as in not present as dead bodies, nor present in any of the unit lists), so I guess they made it off the map before expiring. Got an undead trader and a soon to become undead donkey locked up, plus a pile of stuff (including what probably are cages with a dead boar and a dead cavy, since these two are reported missing). I've got no extermination means yet, but I'm building one in one of the other tunnels. Once the autumn migration wave has arrived I'll try to let these undead out to take that route (fingers crossed). Hm, only two, and wood for cages. Could there be an easier way... Meanwhile a pile of stuff sits "safely" under cover, waiting form my grubby fingers...

A very good start so far, but you never know when things go pear shaped.

[Sanctume]

Would it be cheesy to melt bronze leggings for more metal? 
I mean, since wood is scarce resource:

1 wood: melt 1 bronze pick = 1.0 bronze metal bar in smelter
1 wood: make bronze leggings
1 wood: melt 1 bronze leggings = 1.5 bronze metal bar in smelter
1 wood: make bronze leggings
1 wood: melt 1 bronze leggings = 2.0 bronze metal bar in smelter

So a gain of +1 metal for consuming 5 wood. 
But at this point. 2 wood to gain +1 metal.

[PatrikLundell]

Pseudo's already discussed using the melt exploit (and without looking closely at it, I think his calculation was for a more efficient route).
In my view it defeats part of the purpose of the metal scarce embark. Now, the amount of wood is limited (but the trees have a very good yield), so you won't get extremely far. Personally I'll use the wood supply to provide everyone with masterworks beds eventually, plus a ton of cage traps (I've yet to have too many of those, but on the other hand, I've never had more than 1000 (I think my last embark had something like 500 cage traps). Hm, probably a few mine cart repeaters (impulse ramp exploit driven...) and some glass spike traps as well, down the line (provided, of course, the fortress isn't cut short again).

However, unless it's an official competition, you'll play this hellish embark the way you want.

Edit: It seems creatures that die in cages can reanimate outside of it. I'd forbidden all the merchant stuff, a merchant and his donkey reanimated, and later a "missing" boar reanimated from not providing any visible body, so it was probably brought in a cage (pigs aren't used as draft animals after all). The cavy boar is missing without a trace, however. All the stuff has been recovered, and the undead have been atom smashed (caged, cage hooked up to lever, release into atom smasher).

[Pseudo]

Advice for living:

Cage traps everywhere.

On an unrelated note, I am currently blocking off the caverns. Going rather well, although I have a bunch of dwarves that are brused and scratched from crundles.

I also have a king. Who took the throne in, like, <2 years. I'm still scrambling to make his rooms good enough. Unfortunately, he likes gauntlets and large gems. Gauntlets I can make out of bone, but large gems are trickier... There are some gems, but the RNG god hates me.

As for the melt exploit, there are three routes:

• If you have access to a trader, you can make coins (in stacks of 500), sell them to the trader in stacks of 1, and buy them back. Ludicrous returns, but requires a trader.
  
• If you have a bait animal and some spare labor, you can make an archery range that'll split arrows to stacks of 1, then melt down the resulting single arrows.
• There are a number of other things that can be melted down directly for more than it cost to make.

Without iron / steel things are going quite slowly.

Fakeedit:

Darn it. Just got hit by the "cages get opened when sent to the trading depot" bug.

[PatrikLundell]

I've got a king as well (about 2 months in). The fight with a reanimated skin seemed to have triggered it.

I can't understand the rain heat logic, though. In my spring migration wave, everyone except some animals were well inside when the rain started, and they didn't start bleeding until they'd reached past the halfway point of the map. Nevertheless, 5 migrants (2 of them kids) and a single animal died of bleeding (none of the other animals bled at all), and another 4 dorfs were lost in the dorf reanimation mess. Two more are hurt, and I've got my doctor (ironically) infected after a crundle fight since earlier (sloppy. I should not have let that happen). Of the dead 8 were immigrants, but the 9:th was my farmer, and none of my dorfs have any farming skills except those gained through harvest. Well, I don't think I'll starve anyway. The caravan brought plump helmet spawns... Yum!

Still a net pop profit, since I've got 14 surviving immigrants, for a total pop of 34. However, given the strange rain heat logic, I should probably designate a meeting zone in the closest entrance tunnel when immigrants show up and lock all the entrances' inner access. If they succumb, pull the lever and atom smash the lot. if they didn't croak, let them in. Should probably reroute the tunnels so they all have a path through the trade depot, so the caravan can go there (and be isolated, if need be) without passing through the fortress proper.

I've dislodged the camping crundles. Some of them caught in cages, and the rest left the map. Before that I made another foray into the caverns to collect another 70 or so logs, but all have been converted into cages and beds (save for a small mood supply). A GCS ignored my juicy door bait and left the map, but there will probably be others. Waiting for a new opportunity to get out into the caverns and continue the sealing operation (and collect more wood). All wood cutting holes in the floor have been floored over, however.

I assume you ordered cages containing hostiles to be sent to the depot? I hope the resulting fight went well. It also implies you managed to get a caravan in successfully?

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

It's summer, and four of the initial seven remain. Two lie undead of scalding rain, behind a sturdy wall. One lies mangled (and therefore firmly dead) underneath "Smoothnesssick", the water buffalo cow hair, behind a sturdy door. (Don't ask.) And also a water buffalo lies alive but starving behind a...

OhnoIdidn'twallitoffgodoitRIGHTNOWmydwarvesoryouwillalldie

Okay, I'm safe now. Slabs have been engraved, and we have a fine dining room.
Farms have produced some sweet pods, and we'll start brewing soon. But will the fortress survive its first few seasons? I'm doubting it.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, I lost one fortress to the assumption tha mangled means firmly dead. The undead giant rat killed everything it encountered.

It's heroic to struggle on with 3 remaining dorfs and both draft animals dead. I've given up on the attempts where I failed to bring everyone in alive (On the other hand, they WERE doomed, since I didn't have any stone to wall off the exterior, even if I managed to dump the dead there). I do believe, however, that undead animals can be butchered if killed again. I even think reanimation revivifies the flesh, so even if it was spreading rotten miasma before rising, it yields fresh meat when butchered, if you can find a way to kill it again, that is. I'm not completely sure about that, but I think I've seen that on my previous attempt at a reanimating embark.

[Pseudo]

Ended up reverting to the beginning of the season. (Personal view: I don't mind reverting when bugs are the cause.) Tantrum spiral quickly destroyed the fort, and what was released was building destroyers so doors didn't help (blind cave ogres), and none of my dwarves would pull levers because dead dwarf in lever room aah!

Note to self: my dwarves are way too social and nowhere near scarred enough. Normally I'd gib things beside the dining room, but reanimation causes problems. Also: more cage traps. Or rather better placed ones.

Taking another stab at it now.

(Also, I noticed something. It appears that deep underground, things won't reanimate.)

Edit: second attempt they didn't spawn at a good location, and so I lost the caravan. Still better than last time though, and not due to a bug, so I'll keep it. There's a water buffalo bull running around being chased by an undead peasant head. I feel like playing yakety sax in the backgound...

[vjek]

... I can't understand the rain heat logic, though. In my spring migration wave, everyone except some animals were well inside when the rain started, and they didn't start bleeding until they'd reached past the halfway point of the map.  ...

I've been trying to refine this particular style of embark by creating a purely swamp world with 100% rain, and much higher temperatures, to ensure the surface is universally fatal for animals, migrants and caravans alike.
However, it's... very frustrating and inconsistent.  There are times when being on the surface kills dwarf and animal alike in less than one second.  Then there are times when they can walk around freely, rain or no rain.  And then there's the very repeatable " that yak/water buffalo/horse has no fat, yet is perfectly happy and alive " thing, which... I'm pretty sure is a bug.    I even had a titan show up, and saw all his fat promptly melt off, which it ignored and chased the no-fat water buffalo around for a few days.  There's a no-fat/low-fat joke in there somewhere, I'm sure.

On the plus side, I found an embark where the entire ocean turns to steam as soon as you unpause the embark.  That was.. interesting.  The ocean seems to be slightly better at causing consistent temperature updates, so that may be my path forward.  We shall see.

[PatrikLundell]

A few things:

- I suspect using a cave-in at the lowest cavern level might not plunk down a wall, but rather punch a hole in the floor into the unknown.
- I found a hospital can actually have some use, but you have to enable and disable it to release those resting there before they get too thirsty. Some treatment actually seems to be performed though, and one dorf that was bad enough to be able to crawl to a barrel and not being able to drink recovered enough to drink, and seems to even have picked up a crutch. Annoyingly, dorfs that have no damage left still have the cleaning job on them, and go to rest/sleep in the hospital as soon as it's enabled.
- A whacky thought: I think it should be possible to build a windmill farm reasonably safely by building the mills underground and then make a ramp hole over the center of each windmill. I don't know if there's any wind at the embark, and even if there is, there's no fluid to pump, so all power would go to mine carts, which I normally power with impulse ramps.

Rain heat logic:
Yes, it seems very inconsistent. I think I've had a migrant wave that showed up just after the rain started, but very close to an entrance, and they all made it. To clarify the quote: the immigrants made it half across the map 4 levels under ground before they started bleeding, and were inside when the rain started.

Save scumming:
I think reverting to an earlier save is OK on a crash and when things go bust because of a bug (unkillable head thingies, for instance, although they can be exterminated with DFHack, but if they've already killed a few dorfs who reanimate it doesn't help). I've also decided to restart my attempts from a save where everyone have made it inside with the gear, since I do the start the same way every time, so I've cut away a section of tedious repeat (which is, of course, followed by another section of tedious repeating of the same actions).

Reanimation:
The giant rat that killed off one fortress as it reanimated did its reanimation act in the staircase between the fortress and the cavern, but I don't know where (at a guess, it was about half way). On the other hand, I had a dead crundle by my entrance to the cavern for a fair while before I managed to get someone to dump it on my atom smasher in the entrance, without it reanimating. It might be worth testing out.

Edit:
I had a reanimated skin resulting in 3 parts when killed. I also had a crundle scale that reanimated, was killed into several parts, and the head one reanimating (fortunately, it was already down in my garbage compressor). Since the first generation of peafowl matured I'm having my full time militia (4 dorfs) stationed in the butcher's shop to handle any reanimations. I've also secured the cavern, which is a big step.