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[Sutremaine]

No trap is always 100% lethal (aside from freezing in carbonite). While you can make a trap that does absurd amounts of damage and should kill anything, there is never any guarantee that it will actually kill that thing.

Caveins onto an enclosed tile are always fatal.

[Fenrisson]

As you can see/read there is no easy way, and a lot to experience in front of you young overlord...

The reason most people play this game is for this reason! Every embark is different, you have a great deal of freedom and yes the game is unfair - either you setting up something unfair for your enemies, enjoying seeing them getting smashed while you can have fun setting up an almost perfect fort, or the game rapes you badly in many possible ways! There will be al lot of "I didn't know that", and the best part is to have to start ALL over, unless you have a copy of your last save (which is considered undwarfy by many)...

To survive, learn farming plant and making boozed quickly - and make use of the mechanic workshop! A steady booze and plumb helmet supply as well as a impassable gate (if you close it) are important to win the time to learn about the interesting parts of the game. Learn about traps - they are a powerful tool! …you will learn about their weaknesses soon enough, if you only rely on them .

 
Good luck with the game its fun - and addictive (!!!warning!!!)!

[Anathema]

I learned to play with this text tutorial; I share the dislike of watching someone play on Youtube, I much prefer being able to read through a set of instructions as I play. The tutorial is a bit dated now, but it still serves to teach gameplay basics (most of which haven't changed). If you like it, the same author is now selling an up-to-date and far more detailed DF manual - I highly recommend it, the only downside is needing to pay for it, so starting with the older free version might be a good idea to see if you like his tutorial style.

Of course everything you need to know is on the wiki, somewhere, but those tutorials are great for guiding a total noob (like I was once) through all the basics. It's hard to learn by wiki when you don't even know what to look for, you can easily miss critical stuff.

[Buttery_Mess]

It took me about a month of solid playing before I figured out how to play fort mode.

[Mr.Elendig]

At least half the fun is to die in exiting new and horrible ways. It's no fun if you know how to avoid everything even before you start to play much. So just hang in there and have FUN (and !!FUN!!) etc.

[crew4man]

What they say is true. Being pretty new myself, the wiki is an absolute godsend of information, and setting goals is critical. I had three goals this last fortress: Make Soap, Have a militia, and have a working hospital. But before that, someone mentioned just having a fort for furniture? Did that as well.

I'd also suggest using "k," the look function, to help train your eye as to what is what.

[SharpKris]

recent fort recap... things wen preety good had a small goblin invasion and the occasional undead a while later was a standoff between 10 legendery sword/axe dwarves and 78 undead corpses.. boy i wish i had steel