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[nenjin]

The real test of your food production set up is whether it can support waves after waves of migrants without anyone starving. Which is why we recommended you cap your pop cap to start out with. I think most first forts fail because hordes of migrants eat them out of fort and home until everyone is starving.

Get in the habit of of checking your 'z' screen every few minutes. You can start to get a sense of how fast x dwarves with go through y supplies.

[i2amroy]

Don't use tilesets, don't use Dwarf Therapist. Play like a man.

Back when I started DF, there was no Dwarf Therapist! (Or at least there wasn't for mac.)
Personally I suggest that you keep the wiki open and refer to it whenever you have a serious question when you first start. Then try referring to it less as you get the hang of things. Also don't be afraid to use the loo(k) command. A huge part of playing dwarf fortress is simply memorizing the locations of all of the various menus and the symbols that represent all of the different creatures and objects.

[c32]

erm.. well after i built my farm I figured I would go down another level to start organizing then I realized all but 2 dwarves are missing. Gonna miss those fellows.

[Trif]

You won't have to if you don't bury them fast enough...

[Garath]

you don't happen to have a waterfall somewhere, do you?

check r for combat reports. F1 to look back at your wagon, they might be chilling there. u to look at all the units and check dead/missing

[c32]

you don't happen to have a waterfall somewhere, do you?

check r for combat reports. F1 to look back at your wagon, they might be chilling there. u to look at all the units and check dead/missing

I took apart my wagon for the wood. I suppose they all died since my civilization just withered.
On to the next one! 

[Deathworks]

Dear c32,

Your post invites me to comment on a few things:

The function keys F1 and so on are hot keys which you can set to locations on the map where you can jump with just one key stroke. You can change the target location so that for instance F1 jumps to your main entrance, F2 to your dining room, and so on and so on.

Dwarves who are currently not busy doing something will either go to rooms they own or to a designated meeting area. Since neither of those exist in the very beginning, the location of the wagon is used as a meeting area by the game. Mind you, the location is important, not the wagon, so taking apart the wagon will have no influence on the dwarves. Only once you create a different meeting area will that spot lose its appeal.

I am surprised your civilization died with your fortress ... I thought you need a living dwarven civ in order to play dwarf mode. Anyway, this points out an important aspect for prolonged playing: choosing the right civ.

When you select the location of your new fortress, you can see various pieces of information by pressing TAB (I think). One of those is a list of living dwarven civilizations. While that list is shown, you will notice dark blue tiles on the overview map of the world. Those tiles mark the settlements of the civilization. So, the more dark blue tiles you have, the more settlements that civilization has. One aspect of the game is the possibility to trade for goods you need or want. Unless you are at war with them, you will get traders from one elven civ and one human civ besides the dwarven traders from your home civilization, each civ sending one caravan per year. The goods that the caravans can offer for sale depend on the settlements that the civ has. So, if your home civ only has one settlement, which happens to be in a mountain that only has silver and copper, than your home civ caravan will only be able to bring you those two metals. If your home civ has many different settlements, it is likely that they can get you anything you want. So, a larger civ can make the game easier in the long run, as the trading resources are better.

I hope we are not confusing you too much.

Yours,
Deathworks

[Stormfeather]

Am I the only one who got a lot of help starting from the in-game help files? Seriously, I was confused, looking up the tutorials and such, and finally "clicked" when I started going through the help files, learning how to navigate links and designate and such. Although I did (and still do) use the wiki to refer to a whole lot as well.

Once you have at least the bare minimum knowledge, looking up problems on the forums can help as well, or asking in the big ol' "little questions" thread, whichever one's active at the moment.

And yeah, if you want to play with tilesets and dwarf therapist do so, but also don't think you *have* to... I haven't tried those myself, not everyone does.

And if you're losing dwarves, yeah, combat (r)eports are your friend, in order to figure out what happened to them. Or using (a) to open up the logs again, and scroll up, and see if you missed any death notifications. (If another dwarf is in view when another dwarf is killed you'll usually get a notice, if they're alone you don't though.)

[Loud Whispers]

I class the help files under button mashing

[GhostDwemer]

I class the help files under button mashing

True dat. ? ? ? ? ? ? ?  Yo dawg I heard you like help so I put some help in your help so you can get help while you get help.

[nenjin]

Help files got me started with basic keybindings. And it starts to clue you into to the whole nested selection thing DF has. I can't really remember if I read the whole thing though. I felt like I needed to know specifics sooner rather than later, and the wiki is awfully good at telling you exactly how to do something in a concise way. "Farming?" Bam.

[rtg593]

+1 to button mashing. I found that when trying to change z-levels, lol. Took a second to figure out what was going on:p

[yggiz]

I started back when df was 2d, and got hooked then. A Strategic Roguelike, kickass! I had played nethack, and ADOM, so the ASCII style and cumbersome interface never wore me down. I would always keep the "Tab" command menu open, and examine everything in the playarea. I kept up with it as the versions progressed, so I had an easy time gradually learning the new additions. I imagine it would be tougher trying to absorb everything availiable now in the game all at once.

DF is really a great game for detail and depth and replayability. I don't think I have ever played anything like it.

[GenJeFT]

I just started playing this past weekend. For my first fortress I used the tutorial by 8bittechno. Once I finised the tutorial I downloaded the latest version with a grafix pack and embarked... then got eaten by crocodiles in the first 5 minutes...

Next embark, my wagon embarked and was placed on a frozen river and I did not know it right away. I realised it just before spring came and could not get all my gear off into storage before spring came and lost all my gear with my dwarfs drowned or isolated on different sides of the rivers. All died.

Now I have a fortress with nearly 200 dwarfs and food to outlast a seige for 25 years all by the 12 year of game time. Most fun I had with that was getting attacked by an Ettin, which I ordered my crossbow men to kill. Thats when I discovered I did not have enough quivers to go around and most of my 10 crossbow men started beating the thing with their wooden crossbows. Fortunetly there was a caravan guard with a stell crossbow and steel bolts and it had already paralized it before my guys got there, so the just beat an already helpless creature to death. Two of my guys still lost limbs dispite that fact.

The latest tragedy was a dwarf child who got attacked by a python, but fortunetly I built a 60 bed hospital and the child survived, cant walk anymore but at least the child is alive.

Problem is I embarked year 5 of the world gen and I am the only civilization...

[Awessum Possum]

Well I started by reading stories like Headshoots. Then I started playing, mostly I asked my brother whenever I had questions and used the wiki otherwise alternately, "I wonder what happens if..." "Your settlement has crumbled to it's end.". (Note: I started out by playing 40d and was fully equipped when I switched to 2010.)