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[demonator775]

I am a noob at this game, I have been playing since Christmas of 2011. But it just cant get this game down. I am extremely interested in this game but... Gah my dwarves wither starve or die of thirst, or both. I cant even make it to my first siege. I make farms, and i brew them but it just isn't enough. And i always run out of seeds. I thought you got seeds from eating raw plants? I don't know if anybody would help me with this problem I would greatly appreciate it. Oh and if you would show me a fortress design, well how to do living quarters. I don mine with 3x20 hallway with 10 rooms, the rooms being 3x3. Is this efficient, and is this enough room for my dwarves?

[demonator775]

And for some reason on Genisis my dwarves wont move the food to the food stockpile... this angers me >.<. Please help.

[FuzzyZergling]

Food/farming advice:
First, make sure to bring about 20 of each seed type at embark. I usually make three 3x3 plots planted constantly, or six with one group of three planted in spring/fall and the other in fall/winter. Farming is much more efficient if you bring a +5 grower as one of your embark dwarves.
Plump helmets are the only underground plants that can be eaten raw. Quarry bushes can be processed with an empty bag into a bag of five quarry bush leaves (these are inedible, and must be cooked). Sweet pods can be processed with an empty barrel into dwarven syrup at a brewery, or processed with a bag into dwarven sugar in a farmer's shop. Cave wheat can be processed into dwarven flour. Pig tails can be processed into thread.

Make sure to go into the Z-Kitchen menu and check that none of your raw plants are set as cookable, since this destroys the seeds. You can also see what is or is not brewable on this screen. Brewing, processing, or eating plants raw gives back seeds.

3x3 rooms for dwarves is fine.

[Avo]

When you first start out its often best to start off with "Embark now". Embark now ensures your dwarves have all of the mandatory starting items you might not think to bring when setting up your own embark, one of the first things you wan't to do is set up a plump helmet farm just underground. Make sure to set it to plant plump helmets all year long. If your in a real pickle you can always designate plants to be gathered, providing you some buffer room but its unwise to rely on this.  Whenever you wan't to learn about something consult the wiki.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

[demonator775]

Thx I will try this.

[Tiruin]

I don't know if anybody would help me with this problem I would greatly appreciate it.

Help is always available to those who ask.

So other than the very helpful advice that others gave, if you are using an advanced embark (you pick what you bring), up the seed count until it reaches about ~25, up the food count and drink count. Those are priorities early.

Also, since I bet you have a Miner, put all labors that relate to Hauling off on all dwarves you deign important to survival (I.e. Miners and Farmers, Carpenters and Woodcutters) as Hauling works just like a labor, it must be done before anything else.

Also, Dwarven farms go indoors, at underground tiles, seeable with the 'k' and hovering the X over the tile.

Note that, in Autumn, your allied Dwarven trade caravan arrives, if you have the time, prop up some trade goods at the trade depot and trade them off for supplies needed. Or just deconstruct the depot when they all get there, free supplies (in this version)

[demonator775]

At first I normally just leave all of my dwarves hauling labors on, it takes to long to haul anything if i dont. Also I am very un-experienced in the military part of this game.... And I have no idea how to make a well and i have looked.

[Tiruin]

Well

Also, this thread may help if you have many questions you'd like to ask, but asking here is right ok.

[greycat]

Sweet pods can be processed with an empty barrel into dwarven syrup at a brewery, or processed with a bag into dwarven sugar in a farmer's shop.

Dwarven syrup is made at the farmer's workshop (not brewery), and dwarven sugar is produced by milling at a quern (unpowered) or millstone (powered).  If you brew the sweet pods, you get rum.

In addition to the other plants you listed, the dimple cup must be milled into dye.  (A beginner may not want to bother with these.)

For more details, see Plants.

[demonator775]

Ok so i start of with Plumphelmets and sweetpods, Plumphelmets to eat and Sweetpods to brew?

[greycat]

I've found that no two players approach it the same way.

What I do personally is create 2x2 farm plots.  I start with a single 2x2 aboveground plot, and four 2x2 underground plots.  In the aboveground plot, I plant whatever aboveground seeds I have available for brewing a variety of booze (different every season).  I often have prickle berries, so those are usually in the rotation.  Wild strawberries seem fairly common as well.

Underground, I start out with just a couple plots (and even that's overkill for just the starting 7 dwarves).  I make full use of the textile industry, so I generally plant a mix of crops for cloth-making (pig tails), cloth-dyeing (dimple cup -- or later, aboveground dyes), food (plump helmet, cave wheat, quarry bushes, sweet pods), and booze (plump helmet, cave wheat, extra pig tails).

I turn off all cooking of plants.

I turn off brewing of sweet pods, and sometimes of cave wheat and pig tails, depending on how productive my farms have been.

Once the workshops are in place, I'll generally set the farmer's workshop on repeat processing the pig tails into thread, processing the sweet pods into syrup (requires barrels), and processing the quarry bushes into leaves (requires bags).  Then I'll set the quern on repeat to mill the cave wheat and the dye.  Unfortunately, they'll also mill the sweet pods, which I'd rather they not do, but I'm too lazy to set up separate sweet pod storage and processing facilities.  And besides, I overproduce so much food that it's never a serious issue.

After some immigrants have started coming in, I'll bring the other two underground plots online, which give me five 2x2 plots total.  That, plus gathering of wild plants, plus any meat brought in by killing animals, plus self-produced cheese, plus plants and meat and milk and cheese from caravans, is generally enough for some 50 dwarves.  (I rarely even bother with eggs.)  When the population climbs above that, I'll make another couple plots (always 2x2) if needed.

[demonator775]

Ok then if I do above ground plots how do I protect them? To be a above ground plot it needs sunlight? So if I make a wall around it and a sealing above it will this still make it an above plot? Also I have another question about this. Is this a reliable fort method? Making walls with towers and in the middle the main staircase?

[Garath]

any tile that has ever been exposed to sunlight will forever be considered above ground. If you have a soil layer first, you can channel out an areas and then build a floor over the top and have an above ground farm that cannot be accessed by above-ground creatures.
Some people never build the "fort", with or without towers, but you can if you feel like it. I often have an entrance tunnel that is trapped, or several entrance tunnels with different kind of traps. After a while I start to fortify places around the map, making them inaccessible from outside and then linking it all in an underground network. The entrance to my fort gets walls too, and floors on the inside, as high up as can be, to force flying creatures to use the gatehouses instead of pathing past troubles

[demonator775]

What I normally do is find a mountain and embark on the side whhere there are trees and I tunnle into the side of it and make a winding hallway with a big room in the middle and make fortifications on the walls because, although I have never made it there, that is where my barracks is going to be and in the back of that room I put my main staircase.

[MrWiggles]

I've started to stop bring Wine on my embarks, only fish, and around 20 plump helment spawn seeds, and 10 of the others.

I dont bring the wine to stave of the 'same old booze' bad though, and the seeds are much cheeper then the plant itself.

I bring fish, because its cheap, and it gives me more barrels if you bring every kind of fish.