This has probably already been asked to death but what's a good embark profile for a beginner?
Remember to generate world with advanced parameters->Equestria.
Embark somewhere with lots of wood. Preferably non-evil.
Flux is nice to have and so are metal ores, but scrap is your main source of metal and you can make flux out of bone pellets, so you should be OK regardless.
I like rivers and especially brooks for their infinite water.
Sell anything with "antique", "makeshift" or "scrap" in its name to get some embark points.
You'll of course need some food, drinks, 1-3 hacksaws (bronze), 1-3 mining drills or shovels (bronze).
You should take about 5 copper toolboxes too.
If you're a beginner, it may be a good idea to take a few buckets and splints. Otherwise take wood and make your own. Taking about 20-50 wood (less for heavily forested areas) is a good idea in any case.
Replace bags, ropes, thread and cloth with wool / yarn for 50% reduction in cost. I don't take rope at all and just have 3 cloth and thread for an early hospital.
Take about 10 moulted leather - it will be useful for backpacks and water-skins for the military until you get more from animals or caravans.
I like to take 3-5 fire-proof boulders, like granite, so I can build wood furnace, smelter and forge early. Take 2 iron anvils two: one for forge, one for gunsmith's forge.
Speaking of stone, if you can get coal or saltpetre on embark - they're worth it. Coal will let you make some early military equipment without costing much wood. Saltpetre makes for early gunpowder. 10-20 of each should be enough.
As for seeds, synth-reed, sweet pod and quarry bush should be quite enough.
If you still have embark points, you can gamble by taking a few high-quality salvage logs with you.
When it comes to animals, chickens are necessary for robots, so not only take a few, but build then nest boxes and let them breed. A few cats are nice to have. Dogs can be used as meat shields. I would slaughter any grazers on sight.
As for robots, 1-2 turrets are nice to deter wild animals, sprite-bots are like cats, Protectaponies are OK, and can be upgraded cheaply, but don't rely on them to tank mid-game enemies. Mr Hooves is expensive, so just get a few from caravans instead.
As for your ponies, look at their Cutie Marks. If you get any soldier, plan on training her with that weapon. CMs boost learning rates by *1.6 to *3.0 and it is extremely worth your while to take them into consideration when planning jobs. Well, of course you'll need sompepony do the mining, salvaging (tree cutting) and a dozen or so other tasks that you'll need to do early, but you can just enable them on a few ponies with Dwarf therapist.
Remember to build a wood stockpile that only accepts normal wood (no salvage of any kind) and link it to carpentry, wood burner and (eventually) sawmill. That way you won't waste valuable salvage on furniture and charcoal.
Put another wood stockpile, this time just for salvage, next to your Salvage Yard and make it use 3 carts for transporting the heavy salvage.
Build smelter and forge early and make bronze security armour and weapons for your troops. Smelting bronze out of ore is as efficient as you can get with scrap ore.