Well, DF elves have proven they can be awesome... When raised by dwarves.
The whole immortality thing is a bit of a boon too I would guess.
My life's dream is to win a huge lottery, pay Toady obscene amounts of money to license the game code, set up a dev shop and create..
ELF FOREST
The goal is to raise a forest and train animals to be annoying pains in the ass. The end game is sending a caravan to a working embark in someone's DF game and release the PITA animals (sort of a pun, there) into the DF embark before trading away all the lovely tree stuffs and cloth. If the caravan comes back, it comes back. In any case, the animals proceed to bring FUN to the DF player, and DF multiplayer is achieved.
Back on topic... A working glass industry is why I dig. Without magma--and I guess bituminous coal became extinct since I last played--fuel is a giant pain to find. Choices for bins and barrels come down to wood (uses fuel and bedmaking material,) metal (uses fuel) or glass (gather sand, ugh). Or I guess claymaking, but I haven't played around with that yet other than to note that rock and most clay pots are porous and can't store the precious booze (and I think glazing uses ash, which consumes wood--again.) Glass is the easiest option for pots, 'bins' and cages.