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[The Mighty Dorf]

Hello, I have very recently started playing Dwarf Fortress (about 2-3 days from the time of writing) and have been having a load of good fun trying out the various modes. I'm currently running my first fortress, and although at first it was going perfect I have now run into some issues which I need advice and answers on. Hopefully some of you veteran DFers can give me some tips.

Firstly, to make sure I would be able to produce food and booze for my dwarves I made two farm plots, but strangely my dwarves don't seem to acknowledge their existence, and I cannot seem to plant anything for any season (I'm currently in Summer of my first year). All plant options show up when I interact with the plot, but they are all in grey and I can't select anything. I have the Lazy Newb Pack and use Dwarf Therapist if it helps, and am adamant that I have dwarves with the Farming (Fields) labor on. I am also sure I have at least tower cap seeds available. My farm is underground and is placed on white sand, if that is any help. My embark location is of a temperate climate. Any ideas on what's wrong and how to fix it?

Secondly, my dwarves seem to be getting lazier than they were at first. They are all of a 'Content' mood, but they seem to spend a lot of time on break, eating, drinking and sleeping rather than doing work, even when I designate plants to gather and trees to cut down, the dwarves with the relevant skills don't seem to do anything. I have bedrooms for them, made some chairs to cheer them up when they wanted them, but still my dwarves seem to mope about more than they did at first.

Thirdly, my embark location has very deep soil and I was wondering approximately how many levels of soil there might be before I finally reach stone, as I have found very little of it previously. Also, there is no water around my embark location, only small frozen ponds. I was wondering how I might go thawing them out, or whether they will thaw themselves in time.
Thanks in advance to whoever can help me answer these questions and/or fix my predicament, as my dwarves will soon starve or die of thirst without food and drink.

[Trif]

Hi and welcome to the forums!

1) The available crops are always gray, but should turn white if you select one with (Enter). Tower caps don't have seeds, but probably have some plump helmet spawn. Do you have the plump helmet option? It should be possible to select it.
The soil is fine, and if it's underground it should work - be aware that if a tile was touched by sunlight, it'll count as above ground forever, even if you build a roof above it again.
The only other issue that I could think of is an access problem: maybe your dwarfs can't reach the farms because some stairs are messed up or a wall is misplaced.

2) Increased laziness is probably your imagination. The will to work isn't really connected with happiness, it's dependent on personality. Some dwarfs will just take more breaks than others.
However, if a dwarf is idle and should do some work, but doesn't, that's again indicative of an access problem. Check your stairs.

3) It could be 10 to 20 z-levels of soil, maybe more. A true dwarf always digs deeper!
You're in a temperate climate; it's possible that the ponds are frozen for the whole year. You could melt them with lava, but that's more trouble than it's worth right now. Your best bet is an underground lake or river, you might find them by digging deeper.

And some general advice to avoid starvation: you can gather plants from shrubs on the surface (with (d)-(p)). The berries can be eaten and brewed into wine. It should keep your dwarfs alive for long enough to figure out what's wrong.
And even if you don't make it through the winter, remember: losing is fun! Your next fortress will do better.

[Garath]

I've never seen more than 7 layers of soil, maybe never even more than 6

If you use LNP temperatures may be turned off. Since it was cold when you embarked and the ponds were frozen, they never thawed when things warmed up.

Dwarves with a booze shortage will start to work slower and take more breaks

[The Mighty Dorf]

Wow, thanks for the knowledge (and the quick response too!) it'll really help me in future. I'll try dig deeper and get to work on those crops, should turn out okay. Again, thanks you two for answering my questions.

[guitarxe]

Remember: losing is fun! Your next fortress will do better.

It's better to say: Your next fortress will fail more spectacularly!

[kamikazi1231]

Remember to get food stockpiles up too.  Don't want plants sitting in the crops rotting.  Stockpile to save them.

Did you find out if it was a stair access problem?  If you dug into the side of a mountain then you can probably just use up/down stairs for everything.  If you dug straight down from a flat area you want down stairs on the surface, then up/down stairs for everything below that.  The only exception below that would be possibly avoiding breaking into a cavern by using a up stair at the bottom of your up/down stairs.  I don't know how many forts it took me at the beginning to figure this out.  I had whole forts die from them going down the down stairs and never being able to get back up.

[The Mighty Dorf]

Yeah, I found out it wasn't an access issue, just me being dumb. I also figured out why my dwarves weren't doing some of their jobs, which was because they didn't have the required labours to do them. I've started growing plump helmets and then brewing them to create a sort of cycle in order to get my food production up. If you have any tips on what to do to make more food I'd appreciate it (like how do you get your hens to lay eggs or how to do milking).

Right now I'm trying to start off my metal industry after I dug down a few more z-levels and ran upon a bunch of coal, talc, dolomite, limonite and jade. I'm just building the smelters and metalsmith's shop. Thanks for the help so far everyone, it's really helped my fortress thrive some more.

[Trif]

Glad to hear that you're doing well! Hens lay eggs in nest boxes, you can build them at a craftsdwarf's workshop and place them with (b)-(N). Put a pasture zone ((i)-(n)) around them and assign chickens to the pasture with (N).
Hens will automatically lay eggs and dwarfs will collect them and put them in the food stockpile. They can't be eaten raw, so you'll have to cook a meal with them.
If you want chicks to hatch, you'll need a rooster and you'll need to stop your dwarfs from collecting the eggs. The easiest way is to forbid eggs in your food stockpile with (q) and to forbid eggs from being cooked with (z) in the kitchen tab.

Milking is easier, just build a farmer's workshop ((b)-(w)-(w)) and put Milk Creature on repeat. You'll need a few buckets that you can make at the carpenter's.

[The Mighty Dorf]

Thanks, luckily I have a few chickens and a yak. I'll get to milking and harvesting eggs then, should be able to make some tasty cooked meals.

[ShadowHammer]

Before you start cooking, it's a good idea to stop your dwarves from cooking seeds and plump helmets, because cooking destroys the plump helmet seeds, so you won't be able to plant more if you cook them.

To stop dwarves from cooking plump helmets and their seeds, press (z) for the status screen, then left arrow and enter to select "kitchen". Scroll down to "plump helmets" and check if "cook" is in red or blue. If it is in blue, press "c" to toggle cook, and it should turn red. If it's already red, then it's good. Then scroll to "plump helmet spawn" and repeat. When you are done, plump helmets should be blue for brewing and red for cooking, and plump helmet spawn should be ---- for brewing (they can't be brewed) and red for cooking.

This will ensure that you always have seeds for a self sufficient farming industry.