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[INSANEcyborg]

I'm working on a fort that's in a 100% terrify biome right now.  Luckily there's no evil rain or clouds, just undead running around.  It took me a few tries to get started, what worked for me was bringing 3 military dwarves to start with.  I couldn't afford to fully armor them,  I just brought a leather robe and a bronze helmet for each one.  I had them guard the site until I had everything underground and walled off. 



And here are some tips regarding the meat industry:

1: Un-death preserves meat, anything that re-animates before it rots can still be butchered when killed again.

2: If you go to refuse section under orders (o then r) you can mark skins(i) and hair/wool (h) to be automatically dumped.
 
3: If skin re-animates, and is then cut apart when killed, each piece can be tanned. I've gotten four leather from a single animal.  Should work for hair too, but I haven't checked yet. 

4: There's no need to raise your own yaks when the merchants bring so many...

[Guthbug]

I would add to this that if you mark those goods to be automatically dumped then either drop them into a magma tube (I like to channel those out) or an atom smasher that is down in a deep pit where the parts can't get out if they reanimate before someone pulls a lever.

[ZzarkLinux]

Zombie hair isn't much trouble at all.
The full Yak is much more dangerous because then it has hooves.

Build butcher chambers for early disposal before getting your dump-smash operating.
If anything does escape into your fort, dump it into a sealed room and you're fine for a while.

The issue with reanimating areas is migrants, not livestock.
Migrants are the ones who will swarm your surface if you're not careful.
Reminds me of this

[Fireborn]

I've got the lamest Terrifying Zone for our most recent succession fort.

No reanimation... no zombies... it rains rain...

And the mist?  It causes a mild fever and drowsiness that last a day...


So, you can always survive by getting one that's actually easier to survive in than a normal biome...



But yeah, when undead are rampant, dig in and seal up asap.

[Jacko13]

I would love to see the zombie effect toned down a little as zombie hair and eternal resurrection can be painful.

Once Toady gets around to adding pulping and ending the eternal resurrection it will be more reasonable.

Oooooh pulping! :-D looking forward to that!

[INSANEcyborg]

I have immigrants turned off.  I consider it a preemptive "nobody's willing to come here", but now I have to protect the children. 

Also, zombie yaks are dangerous, but zombie kobolds are worse.  They can still avoid traps and go though forbidden doors.   They're deadly too. A dwarf got punched in the head by one, and the bronze helm didn't stop his skull from being jammed though his brain.

[Iceflame]

I still couldn't get a good start there. Too bad, the map was really nice.

[peskyninja]

Try making a small moat arround your wagon, and digging straight to the caverns.

[Sutremaine]

What does it do, leap through the air and strangle them?

Like this (it's right at the bottom of the page), but with hair.

[Loud Whispers]

Your biggest problem is that you are trying to make a fort in a terrifying biome like you would normaly make your fort, though the strategy is 100% different.

It has to do with blocking your self off from the surface and living underground off farming until you hit the caverns.

I've been building an above ground fort in an evil/neutral biome for quite some time now, and it's radically different from the standard 100% evil embark.
First off, don't bring armor. It's far too expensive on embark, and the best it's going to do is turn a scratch into broken bones, because the undead are all grotesquely powerful. If your Dwarves end up getting hit by the undead, you can bet they're not going to last long for several reasons:

• RNG spiting you.
• Happiness drop amongst the initial seven is devastating.
• Getting knocked over for a Dwarf is a death sentence.

Skip the silver warhammers. If you must embark with weapons, take wooden crossbows or copper warhammers. Copper warhammers are incredibly cheap, and incredibly effective.
If you're certain you can hold off the undead for the first few days, skip the weapons and instead bring the materials needed to make those weapons, which saves a helluva lot of embark points. This is pretty much required if you're going to pick crossbows over hammers - but I can say this, my normal embark with 3 proficient hammerDwarves was torn down very quickly by undead Dingos, and my above ground embark with 2 marksdwarves has lasted me to this day.
Marksdwarves are brilliant against the undead by the way. Build your fort (or dig?) it in the safe side, keep an armed marksdwarf or two on guard and you're set. You can even safely secure sections of woods to clear, and once your military is big enough - you can even actively kill undead roaming your map with showers of wonderful zombie bone bolts. Just make sure your butcheries are in the neutral side.

[Khym Chanur]

I tried to wall my dwarfs in, but I got overrun very time before I moved at least enough food for a year inside.

Embark with 18 pieces of wood.  Turn carpentry on for all the non-miner dwarfs.  Have the miners dig a two or three tile series of stairs down right next to the wagon, while the other dwarfs construct a wall around the wagon + stairs.  When there's only one tile left to construct for the walls designate a meeting area in what you've managed to dig underground, to get everyone inside, and put in the last piece of the wall.  This will protect you from everything but fliers and evil rain/mist, giving you time to move stuff from the wagon underground, at which point you can block off the stairs to the where the wagon was.

[Fishybang]

Your biggest problem is that you are trying to make a fort in a terrifying biome like you would normaly make your fort, though the strategy is 100% different.

It has to do with blocking your self off from the surface and living underground off farming until you hit the caverns.

I've been building an above ground fort in an evil/neutral biome for quite some time now, and it's radically different from the standard 100% evil embark.
First off, don't bring armor. It's far too expensive on embark, and the best it's going to do is turn a scratch into broken bones, because the undead are all grotesquely powerful. If your Dwarves end up getting hit by the undead, you can bet they're not going to last long for several reasons:

• RNG spiting you.
• Happiness drop amongst the initial seven is devastating.
• Getting knocked over for a Dwarf is a death sentence.

Skip the silver warhammers. If you must embark with weapons, take wooden crossbows or copper warhammers. Copper warhammers are incredibly cheap, and incredibly effective.
If you're certain you can hold off the undead for the first few days, skip the weapons and instead bring the materials needed to make those weapons, which saves a helluva lot of embark points. This is pretty much required if you're going to pick crossbows over hammers - but I can say this, my normal embark with 3 proficient hammerDwarves was torn down very quickly by undead Dingos, and my above ground embark with 2 marksdwarves has lasted me to this day.
Marksdwarves are brilliant against the undead by the way. Build your fort (or dig?) it in the safe side, keep an armed marksdwarf or two on guard and you're set. You can even safely secure sections of woods to clear, and once your military is big enough - you can even actively kill undead roaming your map with showers of wonderful zombie bone bolts. Just make sure your butcheries are in the neutral side.

Those were pretty crappy hammerdwarfs cause i had a migrant come with no skills drafted him and he would not die!

[jellsprout]

Get underground as fast as possible. Walls aren't necessary, since the undead are unlikely to wander underground if they don't see anything, but it is recommended.
If you want access to the surface, your first priority should be a magma chute from the surface to the magma sea. At the moment the only two ways to permanently kill something in a zombifying biome is by burning them in magma or by atom smashing them. I personally find magma chutes the easiest to work with. Station your militia as close to the chute as possible, to minimize the distance the corpses need to be carried. As soon as they kill something, order the corpse to be dumped in the chute. Ignore anything too far away.
This shouldn't give too much trouble as long as the amount of corpses remains low. But once the sieges start, the difficulty will rise fast. If you have 50 corpses lying around, there will always be a few becoming zombies and scaring all citizens away. This is the part where I usually give up.

I'm going to try a terrifying embark again, but this time I'm going to use retracting bridges as my entrance to drop the zombies down into a magma pit. The only trouble is collecting the precious goblinite, but with clever usage of pumps, bridges and grates this should still be possible. Another problem are creatures too heavy for the bridges to retract, such as elephants and Titans. I will probably have to add dodging traps or something for them. That just leaves the flying animals as problem. For these I should be able to simply use my good old militia+magma chute.

[Loud Whispers]

Those were pretty crappy hammerdwarfs cause i had a migrant come with no skills drafted him and he would not die!

And that's all nice and well, except that your migrant was facing a completely different scenario than mine.

For starters, it was migrant. So already that means your fort has existed for at least the early parts of a year, whereas I was talking about the early embark with just the starting 7, which is one of the most vulnerable parts of the embark to evil biomes.
Secondly, your migrant wasn't facing undead dingo swarms. Getting attacked by one causes the happiness drop, and since it was the early embark, there was no getting rid of the corpses - they would keep getting back up, and sooner or later, each Dwarf attained cumulative damage and died.
Hammerdwarves > No skill

[GreatWyrmGold]

I have immigrants turned off.  I consider it a preemptive "nobody's willing to come here", but now I have to protect the children.

Waitwaitwait, what? When did this happen?