I can't play without prospector, the idea of embarking and receiving zero useful minerals/stones at all is just nuts. The game should include more detailed info until/unless Toady makes various minerals more useful. Also need clean/cleanowned etc later on to help the lag.
Also really miss runesmith/dwarf guidance, saves me a lot of time of looking up what suits what dorf..
I know what you mean, i play with scarce minerals because it feels more "roleplay" and i like a challenge, but i have to constantly re-embark, or use dfhack to prospect the moment i arrive, in order to save time. Playing the first 5 minutes of a fort 100 times in a row can get annoying ><
Although once i tried to survive an embark with nothing but leather, wood and candy... didn't quite make it to the candy part.
A thought, however, i've seen in older versions (i think) that the embark screen used to give you a readout of the actual stones and minerals. Is this no longer around in any way/shape/form? Is it maybe a setting in advanced world gen parameters?
I'm not playing right now but if you have more motivation than me you might want to look into that. And then let me know what you find out.
Edit: Also, try turning clothing off (add "[ARMORLEVEL:1]" to all the clothing items in the raw/objects folder, there's only about 20ish all up in 5 seperate files, didn't take me that long), you can still make clothes, but dwarves won't wear or claim then anymore so no more clutter, and it boosts your FPS by a pretty decent amount - more info on the bug thread
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2481