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[Baro]

A few years ago a friend of mine tried to get me into nethack.  I concept sounded fun but I just couldn't get past the interface, 'graphics', and lack of easily accessable information in the game.

But this game.. this game has sucked nearly a full day out of me and I only downloaded it 2 days ago!  It's scary and frustraiting, yet so much fun!  I haven't even touched the adventure mode, as the fortress mode is just so much fun.  It's like a "dungeon keeper" where you play good guys.

So, my questions I wasn't able to find on the tiny undeveloped wiki or faq...

Flooding:
The first time I broke through to the river nearly my entire fortress was flooded.  next year, desperate for food, I hoped my little 4x7 room would fill up soon.  The flood came.. but it barely came a few tiles into the room, leading to the fortress' abandonment.  My question is: are floods random or did I do something wrong?  How do channels and aquaducts work?

Farming
How much farming do I need to support my little guys?  What's a good amount of farming tiles per dwarf to support one's self with a little food-proffit.

Cooking
Other than the caps, none of the other crops seem edible.  Do I need to some how cook them?  The kitchen cooks food, but what does the farming workshop do?

Items
My dwarves sometimes seem a little stupid with items.  I made a dwarf a miner, had a copper pick made, but he never got it.  He had no other job but miner, and the pick just sat in the smithy that made it.  I built a weapon rack, but the pick was never delivered.  What do I need to do to get dwarves their items?

Road
What does building the road do, and how do you do it?  Just build a straight road/bridge from your front door to the left edge of the map?

I hope someone can answer my questions!

[Mechanoid]

Floods: They do occur at regular intervals and randomly over the course of the game, but using floodgates to flood fields is far more reliable.

Farming: Good question. For now, a 4x4 (16 tile) clump of farmland seems to be fine. Just dont build a road to the end of the wilderness area, otherwise you'll be flooded with migrants that eat all your food and generally screw you over.

Farming Workshop: Prepares plants, likely to turn them into cookable food objects. If you want every single bit of food cookable, press "Z" to get into the statistical overview and then use the movement keys to select "Kitchen" and press enter. You should be on a screen with 3 columns, one with the name of the food, and wether or not it's cookable/brewable.

Items: You need a "Finished Goods" stockpile (or simply a "pile" as it's called) before the pick can be used or even "seen" by the game.

Road: Like i said before, dont build it until you're ready. Though traders can only come along the roads, so can huge numbers of migrants, and if you have barely any food to feed those migrants, you're going to get alot of hungry dwarves getting angry and causing alot of fist-fights.

[Aquillion]

About farms:  Remember that once you've set up the initial floodgate system, your farm can be expanded fairly easily.  Just build it so there's an expanse of open stone extending in at least one direction, and don't block it off or build too close to it...  That way you can always expand your farmland as necessary.

Well, you have to plan in advance a little, since you really can't flood the area again in the middle of a year without destroying your own crops.  But as long as you keep an eye on your food supplies and expand your farm whenever they begin to drop, you shouldn't have to worry about food again.  (Well, not unless something like an invasion disrupts your farming, in which case you'll have bigger concerns.)

[Baro]

I built a 4x4 room with a flood gate and channel.  The channel runs in an L shape downt he corner of the room like so

FFFCCCCgate
FFFC
FFFC
CCCC

now when I turn the flood gate on, the channel fills with water, but the adjacent plots don't get flooded.  How do I flood?

[Toady One]

In the help "Your First Outpost" -> "Obtaining Food" in the Farming section, there's a part called "Notes on Floodgates" that gives some diagrams.  Basically, a floodgate acts as an interface between the channel and the regular floor.  If you want water to flow from a channel up to the regular floor, you need a floodgate opened at that square.  You can place one on the regular floor of your farm next to the channel.

[JT]

And be careful!

1) Water from natural floods will happily flood right over top of channels.

2) Floodgates actually act as "pumps" of a sort: your dwarves are very clever engineers who know how to use gravity to get as much water as possible flowing through a floodgate.  If your farmland is accessible to the rest of the fort with open space, the rest of your fort will also flood... most likely permanently. =)