The embark selections depend greatly on the resourses you expect to have, if there are trees in abundance, you do not need to bring logs, If you plan to breach the caverns early generally you do not need to bring seed, and so on.
When it comes to skill selections for the dwarves I advocate only spending 2 embark points per dwarf, crossbow/ambusher to get 7 free metal crossbows and 7 stacks of free ammo call it 1 point per crossbow or stack of bolts.
14 points
I generally give no skills to my dwarves at all, and run a commune, where everybody has every labor enabled, as the dwarves do the various jobs needed by a starting colony, I can build every type of smelter and workshop and start making stuff that I need without regard to quality, if I need bags, or stone pots/barrels for industrial use, quality does not matter, just that you have them. Later after mood dwarves or highly skilled immigrants show up I'll start specializing dwarves to a particular job and produce the masterwork items for happiness/export.
That brings us to items.
I recently embarked on a glacier, I had no surface trees or plants, no wildlife, sparse metals, no Iron in the parent civ, and extensive aquifier, but did plan on opening up the caverns.
My equipment:
1 steel anvil
100 units of milk
40 plump helmet
no booze
no meat
no picks
no axes
90 logs
10 metal bars
10 tetrahedrite ore
3 rocks to make into blocks
1 rope
20 bags of sand
4 bags of plaster
The rest of the embark points went for animals: birds, dogs, Yaks, and 1 cat.
Note: if you allow a grazing animal to be turned into a pet, the owner will feed the animal if there is no grazing available. Population controll is by just not petting the unwanted grazers, they'll starve for attention.
I feed my dwarves cheese ommlets (chicken egg and cow cheese roasts)
The sand is for making (low fuel required) items: nest boxes, and pump components, and frees up bags for industrial/agriculturial use.
The plump helmet is turned into 200 booze, which fit into 8 barrels/pots, plump helmet spawn cooking is turned on and 20 seeds are forbidden for future farming.
Logs are made into beds, barrells, bins, and charcoal, the ores are smelted and a selection of ammo, hammers, axes, and picks are made. the surface workshops/smelters are deconstructed and the operation moved underground.
once you've made copper bolts, review the ammo screen and dump/forbid any steel or simurally good ammo you got for free, let the dwarves train on copper/bone, set up a archery target with a catch system to recover used bolts, melt the singles to get a never ending sourse of more metal bars (sparse metals embark).
This embark equipment maximizes the value you get for your embark points but does require some time to begin mining operations, though you could use the logs to build a wall around your starting position, classify this as a slow start embark.