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[highmax28]

I keep making demigods and they all die in less then three days (I think my high score is a week but I didn't bother leaving the town). How do I make my guy actually live past three days? And since I'm asking a question, how do I make my guy better with his skills? Cause I know running around with a simple adept swordsman and compitent dodger, etc. Isn't working well against the first vampire to ever exist in my one world (who is apparently a MAJOR quest target)

****EDIT****
PLEASE AVOID SMART ASS AWNSERS! I want to know how to live ACTUALLY DOING STUFF, like murdering bandits, vampires, and the like and living to spread my deeds to the world

[Broseph Stalin]

Agility, Strength, Toughness, Spatial Sense, Kinesthetic Sense
Dodging, adequate swimmer, and one combat skill.

When you have that combo you can even kick ass with your bare hands.

[vadia]

sleep indoors, find basic quests and I highly advise shields.

[Valtam]

My longest-lived adventurer roamed the lands between the 13th and the 26th of Sandstone, slaying a dragon and raking a pretty decent kill count, if not a big one.

Grinding is somewhat frowned upon some forum members, but that will depend on the level of challenge and enjoyability that you're searching; picking a huge lot of sandy loams and throwing them right in your own square will train quickly the archery and throwing skill, which are useful to uneven the conditions of a battle in your favour.

Try to avoid Fast Travel, and if possible, walk in (S)tealth mode, also trying to use rivers to your training advantage.
Your first quests will be quite easy, but there are the ones that you might discern as being even easier than the others, in this order: werebeasts, wild animals inside lairs and vampires. You'll almost always have the upper hand in these encounters, and you can even solo them. Bandits are certainly suggested to be taken with companions, and their difficulty level is somewhat random.

As you gain more prestige and reputation from quests, peasants and noble alike will give you harder quests, so you might better finish the first tiers of quests before moving onto more demanding ones.

Hamlets often have bags with food and cabinets with leather clothing and armor, which is better than your regular-issue yarn clothing.
You'll find chests and bags with armor and (probably) better weapons inside forts without facing the perils of dungeons. Take the best stuff until you can get inside some Dungeon or Catacombs.
Don't lead charges, this will also tell you when do you have to leave for good and return after getting better skills or equipment.

Last but not least, you ultimately shape your own playstyle, so there isn't something like the easiest or simplest way to do things... Well, perhaps it exists, but maybe is not too fun. Hope this helped.

[Drazinononda]

Easiest and simplest way: start in a town with a food shop and a well. Sell your weapon and buy food. Sleep indoors near the well for twelve hours at a time, eating and drinking when you wake up. Do this for four days, then start adventuring.

[Doctor Blood]

Easiest and simplest way: start in a town with a food shop and a well. Sell your weapon and buy food. Sleep indoors near the well for twelve hours at a time, eating and drinking when you wake up. Do this for four days, then start adventuring.

What does that accomplish?

[vadia]

Easiest and simplest way: start in a town with a food shop and a well. Sell your weapon and buy food. Sleep indoors near the well for twelve hours at a time, eating and drinking when you wake up. Do this for four days, then start adventuring.

you win

[Rtyh-C]

Find a nice safe place where you can sleep at night. Abandoned houses in towns (not villages) are excellent choices: you can keep your stuff there and you're often close to shops; try to find outdoor marketplaces, they're usually better than shops in my experience. So you have food, and more often than not, the town will be at a river, so you also have water.

When you're travelling far away, hop from village to village and sleep there. If you can't find a village before night falls, it's usually safer to keep moving than to sleep (but remember that your chances of getting away with it are low nonetheless). Other than that, simply remember what killed you last and avoid it. Or not. Losing is fun!

[zuglar]

Put significant initial skill points into armor user, dodge, and shield user. If you're not into grinding, you can only level them up by repeatedly risking your life in long fights, which has low survivability.

Sneak. Everywhere. You don't want to be seen, and you never know who might be watching. Don't fast travel, you don't want to deal with 7:1 odds in an ambush. Don't recruit companions, they just blow your cover and then get killed. Start every fight on your own terms, with a *sharp* rock to soften up your opponent (never throw the same one twice, knapping builds important skills). You're aiming for broken/chipped bones, which will usually make them pass out from pain in a few rounds. Then, you can move in for a finishing blow, with no risk of being spotted. Even if you are spotted, still be ready to throw if your melee attacks aren't going well -- throwing avoids the usual problems with counter-attacks and parry/dodge. After you level up with thrown sharp rocks, switch to arrows and bolts. They don't break when thrown (you can re-use them), and you can stab with them to perforate enemies (like dragons) that won't even notice a hit from an axe. They honestly seem to do just as much damage thrown as fired from a bow/crossbow, but without the extra hassle of quivers and bows. A thrown corpse or chest full of armor can save your life when things go wrong. Carry a shield (to block attacks) and find a whip as a secondary weapon (they weigh next to nothing, and even a dabbling lasher can easily cripple small- and medium-sized enemies regardless of armor). I prefer axes as primary weapon for their ability to sever annoying body parts like feet/legs (fast enemies), arms/hands (well-armed enemies), and heads (live enemies). If you do bring companions, use them for quests with 1-2 large targets, like night trolls or dragons. They'll dilute the enemy's attacks, and let you finish them off quickly. The companions even usually survive because the fight ends so fast. Make sure they all have pierce/blunt attacks and they will seldom steal your kills.

At this point, your greatest risk is of getting bored. My most recent character hit 100+ notable kills (including vampires, several pairs of night trolls, and a dragon) without taking a scratch, though he did need a couple of companions to take down his first pair of night trolls. Things did get a bit exciting when he entered the wrong dungeon on his third quest and ended up tackling 20+ bandits at once who kept spotting him, but he survived by throwing random objects and ducking around corners to hide.

And yeah, don't get caught outdoors after dark. Bogeymen will shred even a high-level character. Beaches and mountains don't have them, and they don't enter lairs (just make sure to kill the owner first). If you do have to travel in the dark, sneak (never fast travel) and hope...

[highmax28]

All this talk about how scary boogeymen are and I remember when I managed to kill almost all of a group that came after me. I must've been damn lucky or I just knew the right spots to hit

[sigefread]

All this talk about how scary boogeymen are and I remember when I managed to kill almost all of a group that came after me. I must've been damn lucky or I just knew the right spots to hit

I have never understood the fear of boogeymen either... Even when I play as a tree fondling hippy an elf with wood weapons I can survive ambushes of as many as 7 at once. The only times they ever kill me is if I sleep at night and they kick in my skull before I am even awake. So then I just sleep during the day...

Back on topic though

Tip 1: Char creation and first priorities. I have found the best way to survive is to put one point into your preferred weapon, at least 1 point into swimming (so you can at least cross rivers albeit slowly) and the rest into shield fighter and dodging, and if you feel like going the necromancer route then add one into reading as well. As for stats, max strength put one or two levels in agility and a level or two in toughness to avoid succumbing to pain. Make your first stop a castle town and go into the dungeon, the bandits in here will be spread few and far between, because you only put one level into your weapon category if you find a weapon your chosen race cant normally start with you can easily switch to training that. Look for silver or iron for blunt weaponry due to the weight and lack of sharpness, and copper or bronze for sharp light weaponry. Steel is amazing for any type of weaponry. If on the very off chance you have found adamantine sharp weaponry... Run keep your distance and throw what ever you can at them cause that will mess you up fast. (Though I don't know if this spawns naturally or if you have to have made and exported some first in dwarf mode.)

Tip 2: find where you are in the world. (optional: if a fortress you made that had high level gear is nearby and didn't meet too harsh of an end raid that place. You are not likely to find hard armor for elves or dwarfs as the only shops in the game are human shops that sell human size gear.)

Tip 3: Get a quest for small time enemies such as troglodytes or wear beasts, for the latter make sure you arrive during a non full moon so they are defenseless. Collect loot. Profit.

Tip 4: Buy food. In my personal experience food is hard to come by in adventure mode. Provided the first quest is close enough by your initial fullness should hold you over long enough to get some kinda money to grab a bite or two... Else your gonna have to hunt something and those somethings usually travel in packs and will mess you up when you attack one of them. Elves don't have this problem due to the friends of nature tag though.

Tip 5: Torture as a learning experience. Find a pesky bandit clan or roving gob warband. Kill off all but one, the last one wrestle down and strangle till s/he passes out. Then proceed to use your weapon to remove extremities one piece at a time. I personally start with fingers and hands so they cant fight back any more. Once they are nothing but a torso and head you can either finish them off or leave them. I usually go with the latter after giving them a nickname. That way when karma catches up to this poor adventurer in the form of a forgotten beast made of vomit I can go back and see if they went on to lead a productive life. (One gob "stubby McGee" went on to face a dragon in defense of his tower. "Though crippled in the battle the dragon managed to  strike down "stubby McGee" or however legends modes says that)

[Crashmaster]

Still getting used to the game-mode I use DF hack mode set to get my adventurer from a current fort; full blue everything, artifact blue axe, artifact bone crossbow, artifact bismuth bronze mace, blue spear, top stats, fortress-trained swimmer, legendary at lotsa stuff and a nether-cap barrel of wine.

There was once a bogeyman who survived an axe hit to the head.

[pisskop]

This may have said before, but....

Check the wiki, first of all.  Should have brushed up on it before embarking anyhow.  I will say what I do, and I do okay by me...  I play exclusively as peasant.

Attributes:  I do High STR, AA toughness, AA endurence, and AA willpower.

Skills:  I do novice all.  Main weap, observer, armour using, dodging, reading, swimming, and randomish rest.  I lvl up the swim, and find the starters in dodge and armour to be invaluable.

When starting, if I have no goal in mind (like find the evil mountain hall or my old fort or the caverns) I get a bandit quest.  I sneak to it if it is close by, and swim up to adequate swimmer while out.  I chuck rocks at any animals I see, but do not get consumed with the task.  After dark is a scary place for a noob.

I chuck rocks at the bandits, to soften them.  Then I smash their face in as they fall unconcious.  The last one left alive I choke and torture with my main weapon as best I can.  I collect the loot and go on home.  I sell the stuff as soon as possible at town, but try to avoid sewer missions.  This means going back to the podunk hamlets.

At nightfall, when I feel relatively safe, I sleep one space outside of a house I asked permission to stay in.  The bogies come, and I fight them best I can.  If I get overwhelmed I run inside.  The key to killing them is high speed(900+) and charge attacks.  I repeat night after night is possible.

If in the wild and night falls I make a fire around me in a 4x4 area.  If I want to fight them I make a tunnel atached to this to let them in. It looks like this:

FFFF
F   FFFFF
F   
FFFFFFFF

One space letting them in.

I chuck rock at them, charging the into the fire when they get in. I run when overwhelmed.  I light trees on fire when adjacent to them when running.  This forces them to path around it and I do not have to, buying me time.  Again speed is the lifesaver.  Charge them to the ground and run if you must, but when they start kicking unarmored face you WILL fall.

I rinse and repeat this formula until I get competent or better skills, and then pick up a pincushion companion for support so I can face foes head on.  Soon enough I start to get 'kill the lair-dweller' missions, and that's the week.

[GreatJustice]

Easiest and simplest way: start in a town with a food shop and a well. Sell your weapon and buy food. Sleep indoors near the well for twelve hours at a time, eating and drinking when you wake up. Do this for four days, then start adventuring.

Dwarf Fortress: Normal Boring Life

[Ubiq]

Easiest and simplest way: start in a town with a food shop and a well. Sell your weapon and buy food. Sleep indoors near the well for twelve hours at a time, eating and drinking when you wake up. Do this for four days, then start adventuring.

What does that accomplish?

It guarantees that you make it past three days.

Anyway, here's what I do:

Divide points primarily among Agility, Kinethetic Sense, Spacial Sense. I also add a bit to Recuperation and Disease Resistance to avoid infections.

Skills - Mostly in Dodging with a bit in a primary weapon skill and Observer.

Upon starting, I immediately start sneaking and wander around until I find a murky pool that has a section two or two tiles wide. I jump in, move to the other side, and jump out. If floundering, I go right back to the shore instead. Repeat until Novice Swimming is attained.

Be careful with this as you can lose an Adventurer if you're not careful and try to swim too far from shore. You can use rivers for this, but watch out for large fish or reptiles since they'll mess you up. A murky pool is much less likely to have anything dangerous in it. If you prefer to stay in a town, you can duck in and out from under a bridge to get the same effect while swimming. I don't recommend that for people starting out.

Since I was spending a lot of that time drowning or floundering, my Adventurer gains a lot of Endurance on top of the swimming. Since I'm also sneaking, that usually hits Novice or Better well before Swimmer does. One critical thing here is to avoid regions that boogeymen spawn in until I have a high enough weapon skill to balance or outweigh their fairly high Dodging skill. Mountains are safe, but bodies of water are rare. Same for frozen regions. Seashores, on the other hand, are perfect for this and you have relatively little to fear from large animals interrupting you.

After I've leveled up swimming and sneaking, I head for a town and start poking through the keep and then catacombs until I find a relatively complete set of armor and clothes along with as many shields as I can find. I armor up and head for a cave system where I wander around until I find a group of trogolodytes or other weak creatures. I let them swarm me, level up Fighter, Armor User, Dodger, Shield User, and whatever weapon skill I have thanks to counterstrikes.

After that, it's basically a foregone conclusion that I'll kill anything that exists.