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[WanderingKid]

Embark Screen Mechanics and my supplemental for my personal skill choices and why and how are posted.  I'm still working on edits to the Biomes and that will get swapped when it's done.

[CABL]

I like this series of guides by you, but I don't understand one thing about your choose of dwarf skills. Why didn't you give Mason and/or Mechanic skill to anybody?
I understand that you encourage new players to come up with own set of skills, but many players (including me) consider Mason and Mechanic at the beginning to be important. And while Masons are fairly common among migrants, good Mechanics (by good I mean at least "Skilled" level) are quite rare (at least for me).

[WanderingKid]

I like this series of guides by you, but I don't understand one thing about your choose of dwarf skills. Why didn't you give Mason and/or Mechanic skill to anybody?
I understand that you encourage new players to come up with own set of skills, but many players (including me) consider Mason and Mechanic at the beginning to be important. And while Masons are fairly common among migrants, good Mechanics (by good I mean at least "Skilled" level) are quite rare (at least for me).

As I mentioned at the end, some folks will think I'm a bit nuts for my choices, however, the reasoning is as follows:

I don't care about mechanics.  If a gear works, it works.  It doesn't have to be high quality unless it's in a heavily used area to give good thoughts, and my lever rooms are usually in out of the way rooms so they aren't part of the usual visual results.  The rest of what I use gears for is typically hidden in the middle of nowhere, such as under magma for minecart rollers, in the walls for power transfer, things like that. Thus, anyone can mechanic for me.  I also typically don't need mechanics until much later, and so can give out that moodable skill to some other schlep who already has some useless stuff assigned.

Masons ARE useful early, but I typically don't care about significant rock work until sometime in late summer, maybe Autumn.  For the rare building that requires masonry I'll turn on someone (rotating it around to keep them at level 0) to get the buildings built.  Until I've gotten the majority of the rock stored up near the mason's place anyway, I really don't want to do much significant stone work.  The mason, until I've got a stockpile and wheelbarrows and the like would otherwise spend the majority of his time lugging rocks to make anything.  This is counterproductive to me, particularly when the first migrants come in Autumn I should be getting setup to actually do something useful with all that stone, so I can assign one or two of them to the job.

[Werdna]

A skilled starting Mason was great for easy early happy thoughts from your first tables and chairs and room furnishings and what not, but the current era of dwarf euphoria makes that a lot less necessary.

[WanderingKid]

A skilled starting Mason was great for easy early happy thoughts from your first tables and chairs and room furnishings and what not, but the current era of dwarf euphoria makes that a lot less necessary.

I usually find the Carpenter can keep up with the early work for the dorm and communal dining room reasonably, even in past versions.  Depends on your wood supply, of course, but 30 or 40 logs is really all you need to get going.  A good glassmaker can do that too, except for beds, of course.

I rarely have mood issues in my forts, past or present, unless I'm dealing with undead or massive die offs due to cave ins or poison weather, though.  It might be my playstyle that I run into few issues with that, however.  The last one I had (not counting my single pick series) was due to a massive run of deaths during a fight that went sideways.  That spiral went nuts.  However, I've had dwarves sleeping on the ground with no tables or chairs for months while cracking an aquifer without significant issues, so I've never ran into the need.

[Werdna]

The problem I have with embark Carpenter is that he is map-reliant.  On Scarce-wood biomes your wood can be in tight supply early on between fuel and furniture.  He's a lot more viable now in the current versions since normal wooded areas generate crazy amounts of wood.  On the plus side, a good bed was a very reliable happy thought.  But, for a Mason, every embark reliably generates enough stone to crank out one happy-making item after another, even with the demand of big construction projects.  He's also an easy, reliable way to crank up room value to royal by making precious native metal furniture.  Unfortunately, wood just isn't a valuable enough base for skill to multiply against to create value.  I agree though, dwarf morale is hardly a concern in the current versions.

[WanderingKid]

The problem I have with embark Carpenter is that he is map-reliant.  On Scarce-wood biomes your wood can be in tight supply early on between fuel and furniture.

Ah Hah!  That's where we differ!   I just drag along a few tons of Bituminous Coal and a starter bar of coke to take care of my early needs in those industries if I even need them. 

I have another concern there too: If wood's a scarce resource and I can't grind up a good carpenter, I need as many starter levels as I can get to make decent beds, which means I'll up the starter points even higher, not lower.  Now, if beds, minecarts, and wheelbarrows could be made of stone I would value the masonry skill much higher in the early game, but alas.  I'm not valuing the carpenter for the quality of the goods (other than beds), I'm valuing the time he needs to create items quickly and get back to his other job(s).  By the time I care about goods values I'm shipping out masterwork roasts and clear glass gem adorned totems by the wagonload and buying off entire caravans with a just few pots/bins.

However, my dwarves are so danged busy most of the time it's a typically a moot concern.   Do you actually have idling dwarves before Autumn that it's even a concern?  That's my main reason for not even bothering.  I'm too busy to allow for a 'spare skill' in my opening plays, especially taking over a moodable slot.

Here's my problem:

• Farmer's busy.  That's done.  If he's not busy, he will be in a moment, hold on...
• My miners are going to be somewhere in the bedrock for 6-9 months digging out initial housing, the workshop layouts I like, some space for the tavern, food processing storage, turkey living areas, etc.
• Cook is busy prepping roasts for the eventual caravan that's coming, and squeezing other things in between.
• Brewer's catching up on whatever we scavenged off the surface that can be drank when he's not abusing the local/brought along wood supplies.
• My wildcard character is a hunter to provide food/bone/fat, a fisherman for similar, or a glassmaker so he can start working towards making legendary stuff.  The glassmaker's the only early industry I even worry about bringing coal for, as I find it a useful industry the entire game: pots early, decorations later.
• The last guy I like as a doctor, and he's almost always hauling something somewhere.  I can never catch up on hauling early.

Between all that, dedicating a mason, which again is a moodable skill, is tough for me.  It's time consuming work that is continuous in mid/late game (for me) and is worth getting a dedicated person or two to do for later projects.  Especially since I want everyone with spare time to haul.  HAUL HAUL HAUL!

With my skillpoint layouts the best choice I'd have would be to either use the Brewer or the Cook because of the time investments.  Now, if there are no trees (desert/arctic), and we don't have sand (glassmaker), absolutely, mason makes sense for me.  Heck, I might bring two.  I believe it's primarily a matter of feel and preference.  For my intent, and typical playstyle, it's just not optimal.

[Fleeting Frames]

Solid video for embark. Agreed on Mechanics.

Just one note: If you don't have enough points to purchase something, it will also not be listed.

(Not sure if that was deliberately left out.)

Supplemental:

- One of the unmentioned larger considertions I use is how hard it is to train up a skill.
This leaves me to pick things like Animal Trainer, Wordsmith, Biter/Teacher, Arhitect*.

Though out of those, I haven't really had the chance to do anything important with animal training yet.

I'm also not certain Wordsmith is used - have to dig into library thread to check.
Not sure how long it takes to get proficent in other ones, either.
(Biting is probably pretty hard to reach legendary in, being avoided and deadly to training wildlife).

- Maybe color-coding the skills would be useful?

- Miner is moodable skill! Not a high priority one, but it is one, and I've had moods using that skill.

(Done at mason's workshop, the unit becomes legendary miner. )

This means that I often make my miners engrave, tan, etc. useless mood things.

* On my latest very point-heavy calm seaside embark with kaolinite and fire clay, I went for

Biter/Teacher/Miner(0)/Dodger(0),
Shield/Teacher/Miner(0)/Armor User(0),
Teacher(3)/Wordsmith(2)/Doctoring/Mechanic(0) Goes to library later
Carpenter/Glazer/misc
Mason/Architect/Metalcrafter(0)/Furnace Operator(0)
Trainer/Weaponsmith/Herbalist(0)/misc
Potter/Armorsmith/Herbalist(0)/misc

Misc* - random job to be done on the fly

(Unusual setup, here - typically, I'd let military types handle outdoors and mood for weapon/armorsmithing later on. Then, hey, there it is someone to haul (till migrants come).)

- Regarding doctoring, malpractice doesn't exist, so I consider being willing to help others most important for this job (and so I assume infecting doensn't care for doctor's skill - any info for otherwise?).


Looking at the above, perhaps another angle of consideration worth mentioning would be "used to reach a goal" versus "needed to strive for a goal" (essentially, food, drink, minimal security).

*shrug*

- Other than cooking, I occasionally use that same glassmaking for caravan goods. Weaponsmithing (preferred option), pottery, and on forested maps carpentry are other common ones I use for that.

(Tbh, that's the only real use long-term use for pottery/glazing, outside of niche block production.)

Of course, if you don't cook so much you don't need to farm quite so much, so there's that.

@Werdna: Regarding carpenter, I often bring in enough tower-cap or fungiwood to make a bed for everyone (even on forested maps due preferring their colours).

Mason, similar reason - making coloured stuff.

[WanderingKid]

Solid video for embark. Agreed on Mechanics.

Yay!

Just one note: If you don't have enough points to purchase something, it will also not be listed.
(Not sure if that was deliberately left out.)

Sonofa... No, I'd completely forgot it did that.  I'd forgotten so hard I just went in and checked before I said anything.   I'll put up an annotation.

Supplemental:
- One of the unmentioned larger considertions I use is how hard it is to train up a skill.
This leaves me to pick things like Animal Trainer, Wordsmith, Biter/Teacher, Arhitect*.

Though out of those, I haven't really had the chance to do anything important with animal training yet.

I'd thought about considerations to training up a skill, but in general I choose embark skills towards getting my fort prepped for continuation than I worry about legendary in everything.  While a possible consideration, there's so many skills now I fear it would be nearly impossible.  Imagine trying to get all the instruments, for example.  Animal Trainer is particularly useful in domesticating animals, btw, and can easily be trained up with dogs.

- Maybe color-coding the skills would be useful?

Had I done it with my original templates, sure.  Now, no.  Just no.  You really don't want to know how long it took to do all those 'scratch outs' and 'moving skills on screen', nevermind the original graphics + copying them a few dozen times to keep screen artifacts down.  I... no.

- Miner is moodable skill! Not a high priority one, but it is one, and I've had moods using that skill.
(Done at mason's workshop, the unit becomes legendary miner. )
This means that I often make my miners engrave, tan, etc. useless mood things.

DAMMIT.  Damn it damn it damn it.  I'd forgotten this.  That means that any miner is completely useless to give a moodable skill to because they go legendary in a hurry, typically, and the skill chosen is based on highest moodable skill rank.  Well.  Crap.  Okay, I've got some modifications to do.

grrrr.  Oh, thank you, btw.  Just frustrated.  The miner skills are woven through the narrative and I'll have to adjust a few places.

- Regarding doctoring, malpractice doesn't exist, so I consider being willing to help others most important for this job (and so I assume infecting doensn't care for doctor's skill - any info for otherwise?).

Helping others is more for recovering wounded and watering/feeding the injured.  Nurse work basically.  Infections definitely matter for suturing and surgeon.  My understanding through different forum posts is that Bone Doctor and Wound Dresser may also be considered.  Diagnostician doesn't matter.

Of course, if you don't cook so much you don't need to farm quite so much, so there's that.

True, but my farmers are typically engaged in getting enough fiber to make cloth as they are for booze and food production.  My typical startup is a 5x5 farm of the food products (wheat/fungus/pods for booze, Quarry for food), a 10x10 of pig tails for food and cloth, and a 6x6 of dimple cup for dye and some extra seeds for cooking (eventually).

[Fleeting Frames]

- Yeah, like I said, flip around few skills - i.e. not having tanner compete with weapnsmith.

- Heh. I tend to mostly forget about cloth industries(still need a bit of cloth for hospital and mood backup, mostly). I like my poultsplosions, caravan leather and civilian militias.

Seems you utilize farms far more than I do, usually. I guess it's quite efficient to stack skill.

I tend to go a while without farms - on most aboveground embarks with vegetation, having 1 Not Herbalist (it skills up to legendary bit faster than mining) is enough for both food and booze, and nets the seeds if I ever brother with farms.

I eventually do make few for efficiency or for a particular desired crop, though, once I have a decent migrant farmer.

[Werdna]

The problem I have with embark Carpenter is that he is map-reliant.  On Scarce-wood biomes your wood can be in tight supply early on between fuel and furniture.

Ah Hah!  That's where we differ!   I just drag along a few tons of Bituminous Coal and a starter bar of coke to take care of my early needs in those industries if I even need them. 

I do the exact same thing as well, but the problem is that if the map is absent of any further lignite or b.coal, your initial supply will run out.  I usually rely on the caverns at that point but sometimes you get those god-awful maze caverns that make lumberjacking a real PITA and you have to set up a tree farm.  My point really is that Carpenter has dependencies - trees on map, # of embark points you can sink into fuel.  Mason has none, every map has stone, and there's more happy thought furniture that a Mason can make.  So between the two, if I'm scrambling for points, Mason wins.  You make a fair point about Carpenter not being able to level easy though and benefiting from the boost.  As for Carpenter speed, I honestly don't use enough wood-based items to ever find him a gating factor?  I use him in bursts to create beds and bins but after that its just spot work really... My Carpenter was typically hovering on 'Rusty' before the new Job management orders came in, now at least I can have him auto-make a bed now and then.  Two last plusses of the Mason is that I use tons of stone blocks in my forts to design elaborate above-ground fortifications, he can crank them out fast; and when you have a new noble, the mason is an important factor in furnituring the room quickly/lavishly.

No problem with idling dwarves, I play with extra invaders (FD mod) so the first huge migration wave is typically conscripted to fill out the starter military.  It's only when I hit about 80+ that I get idlers but by then I don't care so much, dwarves are skilled enough that happy thoughts are everywhere.  The skills for early happy thought focus was typically to help recover from early accidents to ambushes or unexpected wildlife and the like.  I'm an older player though so while the current state of the game allows us to ignore tantrums, I still tend to play as though the tantrum-heavy days may return.  Likewise, I think the current state of invaders has weakened considerably and I worry that players might be forgetting what it was like to deal with ambushes and reliable invasions.

Here's my problem:

• Farmer's busy.  That's done.  If he's not busy, he will be in a moment, hold on...
• My miners are going to be somewhere in the bedrock for 6-9 months digging out initial housing, the workshop layouts I like, some space for the tavern, food processing storage, turkey living areas, etc.
• Cook is busy prepping roasts for the eventual caravan that's coming, and squeezing other things in between.
• Brewer's catching up on whatever we scavenged off the surface that can be drank when he's not abusing the local/brought along wood supplies.
• My wildcard character is a hunter to provide food/bone/fat, a fisherman for similar, or a glassmaker so he can start working towards making legendary stuff.  The glassmaker's the only early industry I even worry about bringing coal for, as I find it a useful industry the entire game: pots early, decorations later.
• The last guy I like as a doctor, and he's almost always hauling something somewhere.  I can never catch up on hauling early.

Interesting.  Do you embark with skilled miners?  I simply embark with two completely unskilled dwarves as miners, they level up insanely fast since my first work is typically massive terraforming early defenses in the soil layers.  I don't bother hunting, I always lose them reliably to ambushers (Fortress Defense races don't have the current ambushless bug).  I bring or trade for breeding animals instead to get those items (I bring turkeys for early leather and meat).  Brewing I allow all dwarves to do, it takes longer but it's fun quirk of my civs and it reduces idlers.  I start with a ton of booze (~120) anyway.  I embark with a Weaponsmith/Armorer because of invaders (I play with no traps and one path into fort must always be open).  I embark with an unskilled Cook, he levels up quickly enough on early biscuits.  I play with a house rule not to sell food to caravans, I feel the game over-values food.  I do embark typically with a Grower to maximize food stacks and the extra booze production helps offset the slow Brewers.  My typical 7 man start is: 2 unskilled (Miners), a Weapon/Armorsmith, a Mason/Architect, a Grower(/unskilled Cook), a Doctor/Leader, and a soldier/teacher.  This lends me a lot of points for goods, so I typically can start with steel (edit: bronze, I always forget steel costs a fortune but bronze ores can embark cheaply) armor and weapons ASAP.  The miners and Grower/Cook are 100% occupied at the start, the Leader, Mason, Soldier & Smith are my early haulers/coke smelters/turkey butchers/brewers.

Between all that, dedicating a mason, which again is a moodable skill, is tough for me. 

Ah, I love Mason moods - insanely high value furniture allows me to create instant Royal rooms.  I hate fiddling with room values.

I love embark talk, it's always neat to hear how other players work it and so cool that there can be so many strategies which often boil down to quirks in how we play.

[Werdna]

Seems you utilize farms far more than I do, usually. I guess it's quite efficient to stack skill.

I'm totally sold on stacking skill and using one dedicated Farmer to max out food stacks.  A max-skilled Grower at embark can both work a very small plot and cook and support a pretty crazy amount of dwarves that way.

[Fleeting Frames]

- I don't think it should level slow, though...Not sure how fast it levels, but at least herbalism is crazy fast. Then there's the FPS and danger advantages...Bit more micro to set up, granted,

- Good way to create royal rooms quickly imho is stacking mechanisms onto well-made bridge. Got 50 million bridge in Deathgame with that.

- Speaking of which, those bridges are wooden often enough - I find I usually have carpenter reach legendary before mason.

[Werdna]

- I don't think it should level slow, though...Not sure how fast it levels, but at least herbalism is crazy fast. Then there's the FPS and danger advantages...Bit more micro to set up, granted,

- Good way to create royal rooms quickly imho is stacking mechanisms onto well-made bridge. Got 50 million bridge in Deathgame with that.

- Speaking of which, those bridges are wooden often enough - I find I usually have carpenter reach legendary before mason.

Ah neat, I like the bridge trick.  I'll have to try that.  I make stone block bridges personally.  I guess I'm just not much of a wood user, I tend to use it to floor outdoor areas.  I was thinking "What good is a bridge in a bedroom?" (aside from value) but instantly hit upon the rather useful purpose of noble self-atomizer, in case I need a more pliant noble...

Which do you mean levels slow, Grower?  I find Growing and Herbalism level quickly enough, but starting with a skilled dedicated Grower gets me to Legendary faster and allows me to start Day 0 with the tiny plot (~6 squares), so he can half-time more reliably as the Cook.  Eventually I give him another 6-plot for topside plants.  The large initial stacks ensures that from the embark that I am generating 15+ drink reliably (== less pots and storage needed) and large stacks of food/fiber.  Lately I've been experimenting with a Herbalist since tree fruit can create really large stacks, but that's easy to level by just assigning a migrant to scour the map early on and dumping his plants until he's decent at stacks.  But again, I don't sell food, so my Cook is just for sustenance and not economy.

[WanderingKid]

- Yeah, like I said, flip around few skills - i.e. not having tanner compete with weapnsmith.

Weaver, Mining, Tanning, Gem Cutting, and engraving.  I'd forgotten these would mood.  They really shouldn't.  It's like getting the booby prize.

As for Carpenter speed, I honestly don't use enough wood-based items to ever find him a gating factor?  I use him in bursts to create beds and bins but after that its just spot work really... My Carpenter was typically hovering on 'Rusty' before the new Job management orders came in, now at least I can have him auto-make a bed now and then. 

I'm in the caverns pretty quick.  It'll be obvious why with how I use my miners.  My carpenters end up rusty, though, too.  They just are insanely busy early.  Between beds, tables, chairs, barrels, stepladders, wheelbarrows, Quantum Storage Minecarts, hatches and/or doors for defenses, aquifer piercing goods (almost always on my maps), and some other random stuff, my early carpenter is a busy dwarf.

I'm an older player though so while the current state of the game allows us to ignore tantrums, I still tend to play as though the tantrum-heavy days may return.  Likewise, I think the current state of invaders has weakened considerably and I worry that players might be forgetting what it was like to deal with ambushes and reliable invasions.

Oh, I agree, I've been kicking around since the very tail of 40d.  Why I usually have my hunter around.  He typically finds ambushes and can deal with them, uniform swap not withstanding.  I typically don't have issues with ambushers for the first year or two, though, until my fortress has a value high enough to matter... which it doesn't until I've got some basic defenses and some migrants.

[quote[Interesting.  Do you embark with skilled miners?  [/quote]
Yes.  Once I crack my aquifer(s) I'm digging like a king.  I typically do almost no surface work at all.  A little in the dirt layer for farms and sand if necessary, and then I'm driving into the earth for magma and setting up the fortress.  FPS is my usual fortress death and I try not to encourage it with surface work other than some simple walls and defensive baileys.  I too love Turkeys but they can take a bit to grow up to being worth the butchering tasks.

I love embark talk, it's always neat to hear how other players work it and so cool that there can be so many strategies which often boil down to quirks in how we play.

I agree.

I find it interesting that you're concentrating so much on Legendary skills.  That's certainly not what I care about when I'm setting up embark skills.  At that point it's all about 'does a skill get used enough right now that speed or quality matters'?  Mining for me is very important, they typically hold up the rest of my crew from getting everything off the surface and where I want it.  Carpentry needs speed for me because even though the quality is nice, I need the stuff, I need it NOW, and then I need them moving to other work.  I don't typically embark with a lot of food and booze, so those guys need to get on their stuff pretty quick.

To me, it's all about the efficiency of my opening moves to get underground and setup to avoid those ambushes and invasions.   I want to be deep in the earth behind my hatches and walls with well stocked provisions before they ever show up.