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[Gamerlord]

See those little animals running around outside? Yeah, the cute little woodland creatures and majestic unicorns. Right, see them? RUN.

[Hamiltonz]

If you really mess up on your initial supply setup (like forgetting to buy a pick) rememer that wagon wood can be used to build a carpentry workshop and then one or two training axes, which will then allow you to chop enough wood for walls and crafts.  Wood crafts can be used to buy your way out of trouble, just make sure to build a Depot *before* the caravan arrives.

Also, gather above ground plants and make above ground farms.  This will allow you to produce food and booze right away which will keep your dwarves happy and healthy (i.e. working) while you learn the game.

[Uggh]

Always use Dwarf Therapist. When you are a bit advanced you should also have a closer look at some of the functions and plugins for dfhack, in particular workflow, autobutcher and the one that allows searching in several lists. They prevent a lot of the frustration involved in repetitive tasks necessary for managing a larger fort and let you concentrate on the real challenges.

[Sutremaine]

Focus on drink, food, shelter and somewhere for your beardlings to sleep.

Secondary to that:

You don't need to dig out bedrooms. Make a 10x10 room, make as many beds as there are dwarves (plus extra if you can), place the beds, set them as bedrooms and don't bother resizing. The 'rooms' will all overlap, but the dwarves don't care as long as they have a bed to call their own.

[wierd]

For "stage 1" construction, I usually just build a retaining wall, and an above ground bunker made of whatever's handy. (Wood, rough stone, whatever) inside that I put a small dining hall with 2 tables and 2 chairs, a community dormitory with a bunch of beds, and the food stockpile.

Inside the retaining wall is the fortress entrance. Initially, there is no path outside the wall. It takes a year for the caravan to show up, and in that time, FUN can happen. Turtling is a cop-out, but I don't find being one-hit killed by a swarm of badgers all that pleasing.

By the time I have the initial trunk of the fortress dug, I have plump helmets going, a small block of surface staples growing inside the retaining wall, and have dismantled the initial bunker for raw materials. This is usually about the time that the dwarven caravan shows up. I trade off excess food items, buy additional picks and anvils, buy meat and cheese items, and see if I can get poultry.

Depending on what's available at the site and what I can get from the caravan, determines how I will initiate phase 2 construction.

[BoredVirulence]

I'm gonna have to go with the "loosing is fun" crowd. I suffer from that, as I focus on security. So very few things can truly give me pause, and that's boring so boring. Ever read some of the great community games? Boatmurdered comes to mind. You know what was great about it? Nothing was ever finished or taken seriously. That's what make community games fun, the inconsistency of different rulers. So feel free to focus on building an inverted pyramid before you make any defenses or permanent farms, because that tends to lead to fun. Its when you get yourself into a problematic situation and you stick with it you have the most fun. I currently have a fort where I embarked with 500 dwarves. I brought a lot of food, but I felt metal ore was more important. So I had enough food for half of my dwarves for a single season. Trying to feed them all has been fun. I could have abandoned, and re-embarked with proper rations of food, but that wouldn't have been as fun.

And as far as construction early on, it really depends where you are. If I am in a safe environment, I take time getting things in order. If its an evil boime, I collapse the floor and build a roof as quickly as possible.

[VerdantSF]

Losing may be fun, but I strongly suggest playing things out to the bitter end, at least once.  Sometimes you can manage to turn a tragedy around, and that can give you an even stronger emotional connection to the surviving fort.

[TruePikachu]

When harvesting candy:

The tube leading to the circus needs to hold a 2 tile wide hole inside it. This means you can dig all around the tube, and not unleash the clowns, if you pay attention.

Basically, a tube that looks like this is a NO NO.

AAAA
AXXA
AAAA

(Where A is cotton candy, and X is unrevealed space)

A tube that looks like this, is definately safe to harvest:

AA
AA

And a tube that looks like this has some harvestable bits.

AAAAA
_AXXA
_AAAAAA

(Where _ is a floor.)

When in doubt, do without.

Actually, those all are perfectly safe, since it is a 2x2 hole, not a 1x2 hole that is dangerous.

AAAA
AXXA
AXXA
AAAA

is dangerous.