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[Urist McSpike]

Chickens.  Poultry are cheap (6 points each, I think?) - get at least 2 females & 1 male.  Build a nest (craftdwarf workshop, I think), forbid the first batch of eggs as soon as you see a bird go for the nest, let them hatch.  Now you have lots of chickens...  and eggs.

As for skills, I try to go with a mix.  Remember, you can enable jobs for anyone, so the skills you buy only give them a boost to xp & level for that skill, which affects job speed and product quality.  Nothing prevents you from switching a Legendary 20 Miner to doing work as a Novice 1 Cook.  I like having 2 miners, 1 mason, 1 farmer, and a mix of carpentry, woodcutting, cooking, brewing, mechanics & architecture.  As needs demand, and vagrants migrants arrive, I fill in dedicated jobs as needed.

While not the highest priority, you should set up a Craftdwarf's Workshop and start cranking out Rock Crafts - especially if you have a source of obsidian.  Crafts will give you plenty of trade goods for caravans.  My first priorities are on immediate security for pastured animals & dwarves, a few farm plots, and the immediate workshops needed - Kitchen, Distillery, Mason's, Mechanic's, Carpenter's & Craftdwarf's.  After that, I start digging out the "real" fortress.

[Xenos]

Chickens.  Poultry are cheap (6 points each, I think?) - get at least 2 females & 1 male.  Build a nest (craftdwarf workshop, I think), forbid the first batch of eggs as soon as you see a bird go for the nest, let them hatch.  Now you have lots of chickens...  and eggs.

As for skills, I try to go with a mix.  Remember, you can enable jobs for anyone, so the skills you buy only give them a boost to xp & level for that skill, which affects job speed and product quality.  Nothing prevents you from switching a Legendary 20 Miner to doing work as a Novice 1 Cook.  I like having 2 miners, 1 mason, 1 farmer, and a mix of carpentry, woodcutting, cooking, brewing, mechanics & architecture.  As needs demand, and vagrants migrants arrive, I fill in dedicated jobs as needed.

While not the highest priority, you should set up a Craftdwarf's Workshop and start cranking out Rock Crafts - especially if you have a source of obsidian.  Crafts will give you plenty of trade goods for caravans.  My first priorities are on immediate security for pastured animals & dwarves, a few farm plots, and the immediate workshops needed - Kitchen, Distillery, Mason's, Mechanic's, Carpenter's & Craftdwarf's.  After that, I start digging out the "real" fortress.

Turkey's produce more eggs and meat, guineafowl produce good amounts of eggs and mature quickly. 

[Urist McSpike]

Turkey's produce more eggs and meat, guineafowl produce good amounts of eggs and mature quickly.

I honestly never paid much attention to the differences between poultry types, so I'll have to look at that.  Hmm...  since an "easy" meal only needs two ingredients, can you use two different types of eggs?  Or are all eggs one type of ingredient?  Turducken egg biscuits for everyone!

[WealthyRadish]

My favourite embark trick it to bring as much bronze ores as you can.

Not taking into account fuel (as in, using charcoal instead of purchased coal) bismuth bronze costs 15/16 of an embark point per bar, whereas bronze costs 9/8 points per bar. Even if you do bring fuel, bismuth bronze is still only 1.125 points to bronze's 1.172 points. It does require more labor to produce, though, as 16 bars requires 8 smelting jobs, four times as many as bronze requires. Then again, it's also worth more than bronze.

[mal7690]

I go with:
2 miners (You'd be surprised how much a couple ranks of mining helps dig away from the zombies)
a doctor (need someone to fix those zombie bites)
a people-dorf
Two dogs (war dogs just run to die faster)
Two cats (made this list before the traps were in the game and too lazy and set to change it)
a carpton of booze (mostly rum)
a carpton of wood
two picks
one axe
rest is food, usually sets of 5 of each item

I usually go to savage evil biomes, so I don't want too many animals running around before I can dig in, they just die; and I need enough supplies to survive holed in until my farms work.  I don't want to run 1 of everything food that is 2 cost, because then I have a ton of spoiling things usually sitting outside until the great zombie migration passes.  Since my first act is get everything inside and shut the door, military is not a large concern for me, I just close up the gates and wait for them to leave.

Last I bothered to pay attention to it meals just had to have different things for the ingredients, so no more Dwarven Wine Roasts with minced Wine and chopped Wine.  I would expect since I can have a Wine roast with Rum sauce, you can have an chicken egg roast with minced goose egg on top.

[Nsidious]

So I have a question, I cannot FOR THE LIFE OF ME get past all that icky rain that kills all my dorfs. How do you do that? I mean, my guys are constantly taking stuff out of the cart but they never seem to be able to dig fast enough/haul fast enough.

[Panando]

I disagree with not bringing at least one rope, and one bucket. Those let you get a well going quick, in case you run into a booze issue. The reasons are A) rope requires a few steps to produce which uses several materials. and B) Buckets will take wood, which might be more useful doing other things, like beds.

Wells are evil and useless. The only thing more evil and useless, is running into booze issues. If you don't make the booze supply the #1 priority in your fortress then you must be some kind of elf or a sober beardless dwarf stricken with melancholy (because even elves make booze). The reason why wells are evil and useless, is only one dwarf can draw water from a well at once, and if the water is more than 1z below the well, it takes quite a while - quite a bit longer than it takes for a dwarf to go down and up the stairs (since dwarves travel faster than water falls due to gravity it should be no surprise they also effortlessly out-run buckets being lowered on a rope). If the water is at the well level though (i.e. built directly on top of the water), what usually happens, is that one dwarf uses the well, and the other dwarves who want to use the well, just take water from "around" the well, (i.e. they're actually taking water directly from the water tile because the well is in use, and they don't bother waiting for the well to be free). And the thing is, that while a dwarf is *drinking*, he hogs the well for as long as he is drinking - which is quite a while, about 30 seconds. So the drinking time is in addition to the bucket lowering and raising time, for all that time, other dwarves can't use the well, and will either go thirsty or will just take water directly from the tile and will get the unhappy thought about the lack of a well.
Now yes it is true that a dwarf in a sober elf fortress gets an unhappy thought about the lack of a well, but this is only when they drink water from the well, and as I already said above, most the dwarves wont use the well if there is a lack of booze because drinking water from a well takes so long so all the other dwarves just stick their head down the well and lap it up and get the unhappy thought about the lack of a well anyway. And here's the point, for anything *other* than drinking water, that is, taking water to fill a pond zone, or for a hospital patient, dwarves *do not* get an unhappy thought about the lack of a well, they are perfectly happy to just scoop up a bucket of water from an open tile. But if you have a well, they use it, and it takes them longer to draw a bucket of water from the well, than to just scoop it up. Scooping water is instantaneous and infinite dwarves can do it at once. And to add insult to injury, wells don't have any water purification effect at all, at best, they might trick dwarves into taking water they would usually regard as unusable, but otherwise the bucket of water produced is just as stagnant, salty or muddy as the source tile. And that's why wells are evil and useless and Armok-damned.

Basically in practise you'll be happier if you just make an open water tile and bung a grate over it and define it as a water source zone. Nothing can fall in, nothing can crawl up out of it, dwarves can get buckets of water instantly and infinite dwarves can use/drink from it at once, and it's all faster than using a well.

[Urist McSpike]

Wells are evil and useless. The only thing more evil and useless, is running into booze issues.

I do agree that brewing is an important thing, and it's usually one of my higher priorities.  My initial farms are full on Plump Helmets, and I always uncheck booze for cooking usage.

However, wells are useful.  First of all, it's a backup water supply, in case you have farming/brewing problems, or even getting enough barrels/jugs.  But they're also needed for the hospital, to wash wounds and to give water to wounded - remember, patients are not given booze to drink, only water.  (I think that's to force them out of bed faster, in search of a stiff drink.)

But there's an even more important usage for wells, or at least what I try for - quality.  I usually set up a grand dining hall/meeting room, with two wells.  And, if you construct them with obsidian blocks, masterwork gold chains, and masterwork buckets, (especially if it's designed by a legendary Architect), you can get a big quality boost to happiness.  Happiness for gathering around the well to view it, happiness every time they wash up, happiness every time they drink from it.

[Triaxx2]

I disagree.

Wells are fantastically useful. Feeding a dorf in the hospital water encourages it to get well and find some alcohol. Having a well right in the hospital means the dorfs won't have to go far for water. Putting a few in the dining room, usually located just off the stairs to the rest of the fort means that passing dorfs can stop for a quick drink, and either continue on their business, or find some booze to drink.

Second, they provide a place for dorfs to stop and clean themselves, without it contaminating the entire water source. Toxins are the last thing you want in your water supply.

[Urist McSpike]

Actually, I tend to use a Dwarven Bathtub at the entrances to keep the dwarves clean.

[Nsidious]

Never heard of a dwarven bathtub ^.^ I'll use that from now on xD

[Triaxx2]

I find them more apt to clean the surroundings with a well around. I suppose I can agree most strategies would find them more useful late game though.

[Laurin]

Turkey's produce more eggs and meat, guineafowl produce good amounts of eggs and mature quickly.

I honestly never paid much attention to the differences between poultry types, so I'll have to look at that.  Hmm...  since an "easy" meal only needs two ingredients, can you use two different types of eggs?  Or are all eggs one type of ingredient?  Turducken egg biscuits for everyone!

All different poultry eggs are named appropriately (duck eggs, hen eggs, and so on).  I always bring four pairs of poultry for embark, they are cheap enough.
You can cook lavish meals out of four different sorts of eggs.
The cooks seam a bit reluctant to use them though, unless there are few other ingredients available (which can be achieved by forbidding other food stuff for cooking).

Cooking with eggs caused clutter in earlier versions, but that looks much better in the new releases. I haven't noticed any excessive clutter.