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[druid91]

Well, Does anyone know of a particularly good starting set up?
I normally go with 2 miners, a wood-cutter/ carpenter, a mechanic/ architect/ social skills guy, 2 farmers one with brewing one with butchery, and a metalsmith/ swords-dwarf.

Does that sound good? I'm going to play a succession fort with a friend (they are new to DF, I was hoping to get the first year done and leave notes with helpful bits of information on stuff) and would like to have the basics covered, while surviving at the same time.

[Shades]

If your doing the first year it probably doesn't matter that much. Just try to have one of everything by the end of year 1 and he shouldn't have too much trouble.

Personally I wouldn't bother with miners and go with a weapon smith to make you nice shiny picks for your untrained miners, and an armourer to provide for your troops

[druid91]

If your doing the first year it probably doesn't matter that much. Just try to have one of everything by the end of year 1 and he shouldn't have too much trouble.

Personally I wouldn't bother with miners and go with a weapon smith to make you nice shiny picks for your untrained miners, and an armourer to provide for your troops

I've had whole years go by without migrants before. but the untrained miner idea sounds good.

[Broan13]

That just sounds painfully slow...

[Argembarger]

You should give everyone nothing but social skills and embark with no equi-

Oh. Your friend is new to DF. You are trying to help them learn. I see.

Well my only concern is, if you're really wood-dependent, your cutter/carpenter could be inefficient.

[druid91]

Yeah, I'm trying not to scare them.

I only really use wood for beds,barrels, and cages. and usually bring along 4 logs, added to the logs from the wagon its enough for the starting sevens beds.

[Shades]

That just sounds painfully slow...

After the first season or two all my starting dwarves tend to have proficient level of mining so it's not much slower. I also tend to swap them out when I get my first migrant batch and again by the end of the year they are pretty well trained.

[Broan13]

Thats actually not a bad idea to swap them out, except that I usually like to keep my forts kind of small and contained...dropping Z levels rather than branch out at all.  I like to have 3 levels of non-rock layers maybe about 40 x 70 and then have the everything just drop down deeper until I hit rock to make my bedrooms.  I hate seeing dwarves running left and right to find stuff

I once had all of my walls lined with stairs

[Namfuak]

I once had all of my walls lined with stairs

That must have lagged the hell out of your fort...

[Shoku]

If you are going with skilled miners it's really hard to justify giving the skill to more than two dwarves but if you instead bring five picks or the materials to make them right away you can pretty easily get enough mining done to set up and then disable it on your people that have more important things to be doing once those things become available. So basically no downtime unless you really despise the idea of your first artisans doing some digging their first year.

[Shades]

or the materials to make them right away

I use bronze as it's easy to make lots of bars quickly and uses less fuel. Works very nicely. Also the tools no longer have the ( ) brackets around them because you made them locally

So basically no downtime unless you really despise the idea of your first artisans doing some digging their first year.

This kinda bugs me as I don't really like having unneeded skills cluttering up the UI, but I figure my migrants will often have skills they don't use anyway so it won't change much.

[Shoku]

Dwarf Therapist is really worth the download. Spreadsheet style displays for skills are just so far and beyond the in game interface for professions. Also being able to batch designate labors on migrants and all that other stuff people constantly rave about~