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[drummingpariah]

I'm proud to announce that I finally understand all of the core concepts of Dwarf Fortress. I understand ramps and stairways, can navigate effectively, and can effectively configure squads, schedules, and alerts. I've even gone so far as to learn the basics of Advanced World Generation, and crafted what I believe to be an ideal first 'evil' embark. It has trees, a volcano, and it looks like there's enough dirt to be able to farm a bit.

I made my way into careful preparation, and loaded my 'standard' setup. It includes the basics: food, booze, an anvil, some basic tools, poultry, a pair of next boxes, and a big pile of seeds. I always expect a few of these requirements to be unavailable, but this time it made me pause. Of all times, my first evil embark had to be my first time leaving the Mountainhome without ...

Plump Helmets

That's right. No plump helmets, no plump helmet spawn, none of the most precious and relied-upon resource I count on every time.

Any suggestions for my food industry would be greatly appreciated. I'm a big fan of eggs, and have been experimenting with quarry bushes lately (they're great ... but they aren't as simple and reliable as plump helmets), but this took the terrifying embark to an even more sadistic level.

This should be fun.

[i2amroy]

Before you embark I would like to point out that bringing animals with you on an evil embark usually amounts to nothing short of suicide. As soon as one dies or is killed it revives and kills others, and it is very easy to go from a room full of peaceful turkeys into a vengeful wave of the undead. If you are set on bringing livestock, I'd highly suggest that you:
1) Make sure your hatching rooms are much bigger then you need so the turkeys don't kill any newborns because they are crowded, trigger the undead spiral.
2) Put some traps at the exits/entrances to any areas that contain livestock.

[drummingpariah]

I hadn't even considered that, since I haven't had any die on me in the past. I'm glad you pointed it out. I've already embarked, but I'll start making traps immediately, your plan makes a lot of sense. I suppose my end plan should be to have isolated hatching rooms with a lever/bridge combination to seal them off, then another lever to drop them 10 z-levels (or into magma, or similar).

[SharkForce]

Before you embark I would like to point out that bringing animals with you on an evil embark usually amounts to nothing short of suicide. As soon as one dies or is killed it revives and kills others, and it is very easy to go from a room full of peaceful turkeys into a vengeful wave of the undead. If you are set on bringing livestock, I'd highly suggest that you:
1) Make sure your hatching rooms are much bigger then you need so the turkeys don't kill any newborns because they are crowded, trigger the undead spiral.
2) Put some traps at the exits/entrances to any areas that contain livestock.

i've not tried an evil biome before, but i thought that was only a problem aboveground. if you pasture your turkeys indoors, it shouldn't be a problem (barring a necromancer sneaking in, of course).

anyways, quarry bushes for food should be fine. you can get a truly absurd amount of food from them very reliably. they're also useful for soap,

for drinks, i'd go with pig tails. you can use the extras for your cloth industry, so you were probably going to have to farm them anyways. in the pig tail off-seasons, you can use the same plots to grow dimple cups, if you want to run a cloth industry including dye that is.
 
at least, presuming you weren't planning on something crazy like, say... aboveground farms

if you are in fact planning to farm in non-cavern areas, then there's likely to be an abundance of options open to you. most of the above ground crops seem to have no problems growing in any season. and really, it's not like you need something that grows as fast as plump helmet anyways; the amount of space and labor required to feed an entire fortress from a couple of small (say, 25 square) farms is practically trivial. should you set up a couple of 10x10 plots, you'll have more plants than you know what to do with before long.

[AutomataKittay]

Quarry bushes' actually much better food source than plump helmet, roughly two and half time by my estimation, though it'd be closer to twice as good since it don't grow one season less than plump helmet. Everything else except dimple cup is brewable into drinks, but they all grows in same seasons as quarry bushes does. Pigtails are recommended, though, since they grows as fast as plump helmets ( around 2/3 the time of everything else ) even with only two seasons for it, for brewing!

1 season of quarry bush and 2 seasons of pigtails should be enough for balanced dwarven feeding, with excess pigtails being for cloth. Dimple cup for one season could be used for dyeing, when neither quarry bush nor pigtails are growable, but I think you'll make too much of dimple cups compared to pigtail left over.

It's still not too difficult to live off a farm without plump helmet, other than pretty much requiring a farmer's workshop and some bags for quarry bushes or barrels for sugar pods to dwarven syrup, and a quern or mill plus bags to grind cave wheat and sugar pods to dwarven sugar. And a kitchen to cook them up. Sure you could cook the raw plants, but that's losing seeds, and losing the 5x multiplier of food with dwarven syrup and quarry bushes.

Animals might be a problem with undead curses, and yes, it goes even underground. I've heard of a lot of reports of undead organic forgotten beasts and dwarves rising from coffins

Though I'm pretty sure birds are fine, they're small enough to manage if they goes amok. ( Have a few grains of salt, I've not been cursed with undeads recently )

[i2amroy]

i've not tried an evil biome before, but i thought that was only a problem aboveground. if you pasture your turkeys indoors, it shouldn't be a problem (barring a necromancer sneaking in, of course).

Most evil biomes will revive any corpses anywhere within the evil biome, surface or underground. In fact it's usually the most common way for fortresses in evil biomes to end (a dwarf dies, his corpse revives, kills another dwarf, they both revive, and so on).

[drummingpariah]

Well, THAT went downhill quickly. Just as my first wave of migrants showed up, I got a lesson in 'thralls'. They caught my woodcutter unawares, who then reanimated, then they made short work of my two swordsdwarfs ... which reanimated ... and the rest is now history. Maybe I should refine my embarking skills more before trying that again.

[Zwerg]

I hadn't even considered that, since I haven't had any die on me in the past. I'm glad you pointed it out...

You just wasted another chance for FUN. Tha's not how you play this game. Play first, ask later.

[i2amroy]

Well, THAT went downhill quickly. Just as my first wave of migrants showed up, I got a lesson in 'thralls'. They caught my woodcutter unawares, who then reanimated, then they made short work of my two swordsdwarfs ... which reanimated ... and the rest is now history. Maybe I should refine my embarking skills more before trying that again.

Thralls, potentially the most dangerous creature currently in the game. Basically invincible to everything except bisection or decapitation, super strong/tough, and they retain any skills or armor they had before being thralled. You indeed managed to pick a !!FUN!! embark on your first try.