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[Upright Path]

After spending a whole year digging and polishing (I always polish everything, even channels for magma and water), and making TONNES of does and mechanisms to control it all, I find out that retractable bridges can be used as variable length 'doors' and  hatch covers.

That is to say that when they're in the 'down' position, they form a hatch-cover, through which water and magma can't pass.

With no 'retract' direction, they block nothing when they're up and block the ground when they're down.

With a retract direction, then form a 'door' to block the path of anything flowing in that direction.

Put them together and you have a diverter!

This would have saved me so much time, had I thought about it earlier. Heh.

Also, Channeling the square a pile of rocks is on, with empty space beneath can result in massive death: Melty McMechanic happened to be doing some mining at the bottom of a reservoir and one of my other miners channeled a stack of rock out above his head. Torn off a foot and a few other limbs.

Also also, do let your Legendary Crafter's Masterworks get stolen by Rhesus macaques... Who then swarm up on the poor bastard's pet and kill it before running off with their loot. It's dangerous.

[Laughing Man]

I decided to embark with a hunter.  In the middle of a herd of elephants.  Needless to say, my hunter has rather poor aim and hits every elephant except the one he's shooting at.

There were no survivors.

[Beardless]

I decided to embark with a hunter.  In the middle of a herd of elephants.  Needless to say, my hunter has rather poor aim and hits every elephant except the one he's shooting at.

So that's why my hunter won't hunt! Not enough deadly FUN wildlife.

[Dungeon]

A majority of my facepalm moments come from my 4th and currently most successful Fortress, which is in a sort of succession game at present.

The Balded Bears of Onslaught and the Merchants of Roasting.

This 12 year old above/below ground fort suffers greatly from Goblin Ambush's, Snatchers, Food issues, Dwarf stupidity, bizzare unexplainable things, and most of my inexperiance overall. And used to be trolled alot by Raccoons until I managed to whipe them from the face of the map.

But for it, it has become strong. I have a crap ton of Legendary Dwarves, I even have an ungodly strong legendary child dwarf who is the daughter of my one legendary woodcutter.

But onto the facepalming...

Most of the deaths from my Dwarves originally occured due to insanity and suicide as a result.

My original Clerk/Expedition Leader took a fey mood when Balded Bears was still a strictly above ground fort before the great walls were constructed, and since I still thought the land was worthless and didnt know how to frickin dig. He went stark raving mad, but instead of drowning himself after stripping down. He stayed in one spot. By the wagon, and eventually I got the message that he DROWNED. But, he was in AIR. Appearently there was just too much oxygen for him, he had mutated into some Dwarve/Fishman hybrid.

And of course, there was the various Goblin ambush when the great walls had been completed, where they still got in and didnt attack my dwarves. They merely chased an animal out into the swamplands and into the various ponds. Ensuring death for the beast as they went with them. I never did figure out why they would go to all the effort to chase a donkey to its watery death.

Of course, the mere fact that the frequency of the attacks of Goblin ambush's, Snatchers, and invasions of Raccoon's into my fortress had forced me to set my military to activate EVERYONE at once is pretty facepalm worthy in of itself. Imagine, 80+ Dwarves, even improperly equipped ones, barreling down on a bunch of Goblins. Or some Raccoons. I had to do this so often that it was impeding me doing much else, let alone moving underground.

Then of course, there was the great drowning. This was was a multi-Goblin squad ambush. They attacked at two points and I had to activate my military in two different squads. Having gained migrants, I was able to do. But, my Woodcutter and another, whome they tried to ambush, killed one of them, and they ran, and they chased after them. Straight into a pond infront of them...And drowned. Course she chased one of the Goblin's in there too. Meanwhile the others chased after the other squad of Goblins, chased the ones they didnt kill off the map. And on the way back, one by one, walked into a pond and drowned.

It wasnt even a suicide. It was just "Congradulations, we won!, hey, where'd everyone go?, glub! glub! glub!". The mayor, and 10 others, aside from the Woodcuter and her friend. The other two were like "I'LL KILL YOU!, glub! glub! glub!"...I had to revert the save on that one. And I made a point to extend the walls around ALL the nearby Water sources so that cant happen again.

Oh, and now, even after my Fort has been tuned up from my friend playing on it. My Dwarves are so interconnected with each other relationship wise, that if one dies, it threatens to cause a MASSIVE tantrum spiral. Leading to save reversion.

Sometimes the game makes my head hurt.

[deoxys413]

Hoo boy, just had a doozy of a faceplam. So I'm working on my coliseum in my new fortress and my first 'siege' arrives consisting of solely of goblin spearmen. I had my cage traps set and ready to go... except they just camped at the edge of the map and caused construction interruptions. This continues for most of the winter until the next one arrives. These guys not only made the spearmen disappear but did what they should have, then proceeded to path to my traps... too bad I hadn't taken into account that they would have mounts for that was all I caught. >>

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

I had the most epic facepalm moment ever.

I had never before considered that flying archers would be able to get to my fortifications to shoot through them. Stupid goblin bowmen and your stupid giant bats...

[SethCreiyd]

This screenshot was taken about fifteen seconds after my last embark.

[cdrcjsn]

My first fort.  Haven't read the forums or wiki yet.

I keep getting attacked by invisible ghosts and faeries!  I kept thinking "dang, who do my dwarves keep getting possessed and charmed by fey?"

I abandoned my first two forts because of this...

[Twisted Mansions]

Here is a good one I had from 2010 DF when it first came out. My Fortress of Twisted Mansions was quite a successful fortress (access to caverns, keeping the local cavern inhabitants in check, food, booze, military ect.), until a forgotten boost, who was a squirrel made out of glass showed up.  It managed to fight it's way up the main staircase, until my military broke it all over, and it was crawling on glass stubs, still alive mind you. This beast single-handedly scared my entire fortress into a corner, refusing to get anywhere near it, while my military continued to beat it and beat it until they died of starvation, dehydration, or exhaustion. Meanwhile, my civilians were still scared into a corner and would not budge at all with the beast guarding the stairs, allowing more cave beasties inside.

Upon realizing this beast would not die, I abandoned, but still the sheer cirmunstances made me have a "WTF" moment and a long face-palming.

[Drawde]

Using 31.05, I've had a fortress going for a few years.  Yet no new immigrants.  I finally checked the init file, and when I'd changed the numbers from the download, had accidentally set population cap to "00" instead of "80".  As I said, for a few years.   

[Bronze Dog]

Embarked on a 6x6 map, which my laptop was able to handle pretty well to date. Thought I could handle a waterfall, and felt like carving into some cliffs for a change, so I picked a location with some 8s for slope.

Multiple facepalms occur as follows:

1. Turns out I can't process waterfalls so well.

2. Said waterfall wasn't at the cliffs between the western mountain range and the eastern savanna: It just carved 15 z-levels downward in the otherwise flat plain.

3. When I dig an exploratory shaft, it ends up leading all the way down to z-level 19, suggesting I completely skipped the first two caverns (I got a double-notification of finding the expanse. Deep Pit feature joining two of them?) And it turns out there's a waterfall down there.

4. Normally I dig my first stuff in a soil layer. This time I went into the mountain. Now I have a much greater desire to obliterate all the cheap gray stone.

5. I have a bit of fun (Not of the capital-F variety) with my first waterwheel and pump when my floodgates don't work as expected. Thankfully, I could still close the main input and only have to deal with a lot of unwanted mud. I do end up feeling good about planting more than just one plot of plump helmets, thankfully.

6. Nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel. Took me a while before I found some veins I could use to make copper and bronze. Only source of iron was hanging from the ceiling of the deep cavern. Was planning to make an enclosed catwalk to mine it, but I'll be moving on with the update, as well as another reason:

7. No trade. No one shows up, not even the dwarven caravan. I check the civ listing, and there are no significant leaders in the dwarf civ I picked, which apparently affects the caravan, and two animal man tribes. I got my dabbling stonecrafter making all those mugs and training up to the point he created two masterpieces in a row for nothing. If I was a little more experienced, I probably would have tried going for complete self-sufficiency, but the frame rate issues made it less enjoyable.

I think I'll try finding a 4x4 spot closer to home on my next fort in .06.

[Greiger]

Metal facepalm moment.  I have run out of obtainable adamantine for my military, and there wasn't much anyway since every spire I tapped bugged and gained the invisible wall bug shortly after I started harvesting.  Just 2 swords, 2 spears and 3 adamantine mail shirts is all I could get out of 3 spires. I could try going deeper but I don't wanna risk it.  Everything else is being made of iron as I look for some copper and tin to make bronze.  And then I realize something.

My upper fortress is dug into 2 different magnetite veins, I have plenty of iron.  But I already knew that.  What I didn't realize was that I had dug through at least 6 full z levels of MARBLE on my way to the magma.  And I had also found more coal than is present in the entire state of Pennsylvania.  Screw bronze, I can easily make steel.  And massive quantities of it.

I had found all of this within the fortress's first year.  But it's mid-summer of year 3 that I finally put iron+coal+flux together and remember what all that can mean.  I have been using simple iron that whole time.

[AngleWyrm]

Six months into the game and no dwarven caravan. Examine "c"ivilization, hit enter on the dwarves and...
"This civilization has no important leaders."
game over.

[Eidako]

I had found all of this within the fortress's first year.  But it's mid-summer of year 3 that I finally put iron+coal+flux together and remember what all that can mean.  I have been using simple iron that whole time.

Ditto. Crapton of iron and coal, but it took me a bit to realize that the floors made entirely of marble were flux, so I have a bunch of iron junk in my stockpiles. Part of the problem is that marble isn't marked as an economic stone by default. On the bright side iron bars are easier to produce, letting you train your smiths faster -- now that you're going through the time-consuming process of "refine coal, smelt iron, smelt iron, smelt pig iron, smelt steel", they're putting it to good use by making high quality gear.

[weird beard]

Several years into running a fort, deciding I want a moat.

Not checking the z level beneath ground level, on which I had created a bunch of stockpiles, channelling out my moat.

Channelling straight through one of my stockpiles, with my moat attached directly to the river. The water filled up my fledgling fort and everybody died. Well, I abandoned after I realised that half my dwarves were dead and the fort was doomed, but, you know. Didn't seem much point just watching everybody die.

EDIT:

Another thing, accidentally setting my legendary axedwarf to captain of the guard in 00.31.04. This was only yesterday in fact. By the time I came to rectify the mistake, he had already massacred 8 dwarves, in a fort already well onto the way to a tantrum spiral. Legendary axedwarves give SERIOUS beatings. :|

EDIT: AND another one. Simple but stupid. I set out all the skills for my dwarves... and then accidentally embarked with no items. And I mean NO items. I'd wiped them all, as I often do whilst setting out skills and forgotten to put any back.