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[Jing0000]

First off while i'm not new here. I have never really posted, so hello to all of you. Despite not playing much more then adventure mode for a long time. I spend countless hours reading this forum here which is always both interesting and entertaining at the same time. DF has to have one of my favorite community's ever..even If I have only been lurking.

Now as to the topic, this is only the 2nd fort I have ever tried to make. the first one ran into some FUN in the form of goblins and a non existent military (there was one dwarf but I was not able to wake him up in time, he was sleepy) went back to adventure mode shortly after. started the game back up tonight though with a full promise that I AM going to get a Fort running and it WILL last more then two years. Right now I have embarked in a warm good biome (no flux stone, but there was not any in three worlds I made...decided to risk going without it) and dug my way into the side of hill, have a food and wood stockpile going and a farm..and now it's hit me that I have forgotten everything I need to know about doing well here...such as making drawbridges..now i'm not asking that people give me a detailed tutorial on how to make one. that is what the wiki is for.

But any general advice that you can give would be much appreciated. I embarked with two miners, two woodcutters/carpenters. (one of these is also a mason) a gatherer and farmer. and I think thats it, though someone does have some leader skills. I have a lot of food and two cats..that's all I have extra for starting supplies except for the usual. The embark has little in the way of danger on it so far, is right next to an elf marker on the map and some humans, Right now i'm having the miners dig into the hill, putting said farm into motion on the same level...currently deciding on the best way to build initial defense *bridge/traps/etc* and to remember the old tricks and general strategy. like I said above much of this I will look up on the wiki..I don't expect total hand holding or anything, but any advice that you would be willing to give would be more then welcome, and any wish's of good luck as well!

[AutomataKittay]

Use plump helmet as primary foodstuff until you works out how to manage other foodstuffs, I'd say is the best advice for farm.

Draft a lot of dwarves in military and give them steel if you can, bronze weapons' next best ( iron armor does better than bronze IIRC, but I can't verify ), once you get near 80 pop or a million fort wealth.

Can't really help too much beyond those general advice since almost everything's in the magmawiki, but ask specific questions if you're having trouble!

( If you're worried about your fortress falling, make a drawbridge 'airlock' with two drawbridges linked to separate levers and a barrack in between so if siege comes, you can seal yourself in and see how your soldiers do. I uses same layout for trader depot, myself, to keep them safe )

[Jing0000]

This game has always fascinated me due to the sheer scope of it. Just figuring out how to work everything is a Challenge all in it's own. using the Lazy newb pack right now. Dwarf therapist looks useful (and it seems 90% of the forums use it)

[AutomataKittay]

I don't uses Therapist, I don't even know what it really does beyond being helpful in organizing dwarves

However it does helps others a lot, so use it as you likes!

[Jetman123]

Your best defense really is a choke point. Dwarves are underground creatures. Always let the enemy come to you, preferably down a narrow hallway in which you can fire bolts into him through fortifications while he's forced to dodge a hail of stone and cage traps. If anybody survives to the end, your melee dwarves should be able to mop up the rest.

What you want to do for defense is assign a burrow underground - put a "panic room" stockpile down with some basic food and booze in an isolated, specially constructed area - and set your military alerts so all the civilians are constricted to that burrow when you want them to be. While they are buried deep within the fortress with their backs to the wall, your military dwarves can engage with impunity. If the military dwarves fail, the civilians can be drafted themselves for a final stand.

For right now, though, your priorities should be on building farms, getting your dwarves a place to sleep, and getting production and a trade depot up so you can trade for valuable supplies. You won't face many military threats in your first year, barring spectacularly bad luck. When you have spare manpower in the form of migrants with non-useful skills, assign them to be your military dwarves and get them training. Get a couple small squads of archers, and one large squad of dwarves - I like speardwarves as they're good for mopping things up as well as killing large critters. Plus a mob of dwarves with spears is highly amusing to me for some reason.

Construct, as I said, your initial tunnel so that it's a long stretch (possibly with projections for farms branching out of it, if it's dug into soil) that can be used as a narrow choke point, with an opening at the end of it for your military dwarves to make their stand at. Put stone fortifications and doors between them and the corridor, and put the trade depot outside that hall so the caravan can help you deal with military threats. Keep your dwarves outside to avoid cave adaptation, in meeting zones set outside, or statue gardens, but never let them roam far. The moment anything more than a thief shows up, get that alert triggered and have them get below.

Also, breed dogs. Lots of dogs. They are good as a source of meat, bones (for training bolts, which you will need lots of), and as force multipliers for your hunters and soldiers.

[Shaolin ToFu]

First off, congratulations on striking the earth!

I still consider myself quite noobish after playing fortress mode on and of for almost two years, so I am by no means an expert (never did any terrifying biomes, never dug beyond 2nd cavern, never saw magma even..), but I feel like I have most basics down more or less. So here goes..

FOOD&DRINKS
As stated above, plump helmets are your friend. They can be eaten raw, most other crops need to be cooked. A notable exception are berries, you will find these outside; just (d)esignate a large rectangle for gathering (p)lants and they will come to you.
For drinks, you will need a still and a brewer. Also, a lot of pots and barrels.
Brewing plants or eating them raw will leave seeds, these will be planted in farm plots by your farmer and harvested automatically. You need to specify what crop to grow in a plot for each season separately!

WORKSHOPS
You really need:
- a still (as mentioned)
- carpenters workshop (beds and bins)
- masons workshop (tables chairs and doors, also blocks if you'r going to build walls and such)
- craftsdwarves workshop (rock pots, don't make wooden barrels unless you have a LOT of wood)

I usually also quickly get
- butcher and tanner (next to each other, don't let the hides go to waste..)
- farmers workshop (but you won't really need it right away unless you want to milk your caravan animals)
- jewelers shop (gems are everywhere, might as well cut them)
- mechanics workshop (mechanisms are needed for traps and connecting bridges to levers)
- fishery (as soon as fisherdwarves show up, ie when the first migrant wave arrives)

For a metal industry you will need a wood burner, smelter and forge. The first two are under furnac(e)s instead of (w)orkshops in the (b)uild menu. I usually wait a bit with these, the starting seven have enough on their hands as it is.

You can set a task to (r)epeat, this is very useful (dare I say mandatory) in stills. Once your fort starts growing, don't hesitate do double up on certain workshops. Masons, crafts and stills are usually the first I do this to.

NOBLES
Getting a bookkeeper fairly quickly is advised, it makes your stocks menu (get there with 'z') very useful. You need a broker to trade. Although any dwarf can trade, only a dwarf that has the appraiser skill can actually see what an item is worth. He will learn this after his first trade, so keeping the same dwarf doing this makes a lot of sense.
A manager can be handy, but isn't necessary as long as your population is low. Both manager and bookkeeper need an office to work, these are created from a chair using 'q')

TRADING
You need a depot to trade. Building a depot (as well as certain other buildings) requires architecture, don't forget to activate this on at least one dwarf. Stone crafts are the easiest trade goods to muster up in your first year.
I usually try to buy up all the wood from caravans, as I never seem to have enough.
Also, get some cloth, some thread and some glass from the first caravan, moody dwarves might ask for this long before you can produce it yourself. (Cloth/thread of all origins! So silk, yarn and plant. These moody dwarves can be very picky.)
The dwarven caravan allows you to request certain goods to be brought the next year. Some things I always ask for are wood (better safe than sorry), lignite and bituminous coal (unless it's available at my fort), Iron ore (again, if it's not available) and certain animals (I like sheep, you should at least get a breeding pair of dogs). In your case, you could also order flux stone.

DEFENSE
This is were I feel most incompetent at, but anyway..
Stick to one entrance and plan on how to defend it. Caravan wagons need a 3-tile wide entrance to your depot and can not cross traps. A drawbridge allows you to close this off, perhaps even from two sides: outside bridge down at all times, once a caravan is in your depot, close the outer and open the inner bridge. You need to connect the bridges to levers for this.
If you are going to use a military, start it up sooner rather than later. Build a barracks from a bed, cabinet, armor stand or weapon rack and, with q, assign it to your squad(s) for training. Put the first barracks close to your entrance, so your military might be near when they are needed. Some enemies sneak up on you and are only revealed when standing next to one of your units. People use dogs on chains/ropes for this, I have grown into the habit of pasturing bunnies in my entrance, but am not sure if they actually spot invaders, since most kobold and goblin thieves tend to run into fisherdwarves long before they reach my doorstep.
Dogs can be trained for war or hunting and assigned to dwarves.

Well, I've got that out of my system, hope it's any help (I see some of it got ninja'd while typing this up, but whatever. I second what Jetman says about beds, also, don't forget a dining room!)

On a final note, don't be sad if this fort doesn't succeed right away. I've learned mostly by building forts and focusing on one problem at a time. So first, a fort where there's enough food and booze. Then, a fort that has proper housing. Then a fort with a metal/clothing industry or a hospital etc.
In my current fort I have a somewhat organised military for the first time and a somewhat functional clothing industry. Soap, glass or powered machinery I haven't even touched.
But I'm having fun, and so will you!

[Nuoya]

I recommend embarking with 2 full sets of copper armor and 2 sword/axe/spear/mace/hammer dwarves (your choice). Give them 5 points in whatever weapon skill they have and at least 1 point in a civilian skill (mason!) so they don't get bad thoughts. You can almost immediately make a bed and set it to be a barracks for them to train in every other month, and if it's only 2 dwarves in the squad then their skills will go up real quick. After 1 year they'll be able to solo goblin ambushes and after 2 or 3 years those 2 dwarves can usually handle a whole siege. Really. Their stats get so buffed that they can zip around at light speed and one shot everything in a gory whirlwind. HOWEVER, always beware of anything with hooves, such as a camel, because right now animals with large size and hooves can one shot dwarves in the brain quite often.

Next, I recommend you try an "Advanced World Parameters" embark with LOTS of volcanoes and then embark on one because easy magma just makes the game more fun and dealing with charcoal is just... a pain

[Jing0000]

I recommend embarking with 2 full sets of copper armor and 2 sword/axe/spear/mace/hammer dwarves (your choice). Give them 5 points in whatever weapon skill they have and at least 1 point in a civilian skill (mason!) so they don't get bad thoughts. You can almost immediately make a bed and set it to be a barracks for them to train in every other month, and if it's only 2 dwarves in the squad then their skills will go up real quick. After 1 year they'll be able to solo goblin ambushes and after 2 or 3 years those 2 dwarves can usually handle a whole siege. Really. Their stats get so buffed that they can zip around at light speed and one shot everything in a gory whirlwind. HOWEVER, always beware of anything with hooves, such as a camel, because right now animals with large size and hooves can one shot dwarves in the brain quite often.

Next, I recommend you try an "Advanced World Parameters" embark with LOTS of volcanoes and then embark on one because easy magma just makes the game more fun and dealing with charcoal is just... a pain

the end part of this sounds very scary, very. I'd roast my dorfs alive so fast.. thank you for Jetman and Shaolin as well, all advice is being read carefully. currently constructing a drawbridge system. still figuring out military controls...thinking of carving out a hole above the bridge in the mountain with a small window in it and sticking a kitten up there.. I heard they can detect things..got my first few migrants in, can't find one of my dwarfs but everything else is in order so far..winter is approaching so i'm trying to hurry up and finish a basic depot and some trade goods so I can get some extra food from the traders..i'm nearly out.

[Numeroid]

I find it helps to have a path with one drawbridge at one end of a hallway-entrance and another at the other, so you can pull one and it will stop the invaders and you still have a backup one in case they get past the first, or you could simply have a really large drawbridge that covers a massive drop and use it to kill your enemies. Although I can't stress enough that there's no replacement for a nice strong military. Use traps for saving manpower, reducing losses, etc.

I'd recommend getting a hospital going as one of your first projects. It's fairly simple, just dig out a room, fill it with beds/tables and some chests or bags to be filled with cloth. A water source is also a necessity for a hospital, as resting dwarfs will only drink water and it is needed to clean wounds.

A marksdwarf tower is a nice thing to have as well. As for training marksdwarfs, the general opinion is that the best way to train them is to set kill orders on animals that are around your fort. Bolts are easy to make as wood and bone can be used, although some metals are better apparently.

I have always used plump helmets at every stage during my fort, I never really found the need to switch to anything else. I guess if you're a perfectionist the bad thought gained from only eating one type of food is a big problem but I don't really desire my dwarfs to be as happy as possible, they can be ecstatic and still have some minor bad thoughts. Also, I like to embark in areas that have clay so I don't have to bother with irrigation.

Also, you can deconstruct trade depots that contain goods and the goods will all drop and be claimed by your dwarfs. I often do this for the first 1-3 caravans and by then I usually have some goods that I can actually trade with.

If you have an abundance of stone you can make use of it by not making barrels but rather by making rock pots at a Craftsdwarf's workshop.They do all of the same things barrels do and stone is often considerably more plentiful than wood is. Not to mention it allows you to use more wood on other things that are wood only, like beds.

If you can't find a dwarf you can press U to view the units screen, select his/her name and press C to zoom to his/her location, if I'm right.

[Chessrook44]

Traps.  If you want to survive, build LOTS and LOTS of traps.  My fort Blackstone had a 5x7 corridor of fully-stocked weapon traps, followed by a 3x5 path of cage traps.  Anything that didn't get killed by the weapon traps, or dodged through them, got caught in a cage.  My military only ever went out for the odd ambush or Hydra or large beast.  Only downside is that occasionally a Goblin squad leader dies at the first or second row of traps, and the rest of his squad meanders about the entrance, staring at its corpse.

Once you've got that one entrance secured (With an extra bridge for more security) you can begin learning how to get your fort really well-stocked and keep your dwarves happy.

[Drazinononda]

My advice is more long-run help:

Play more than one or two fortresses before throwing in the towel.

I've been playing DF for over two years, and the vast majority has been on Fortress mode. I'm still learning how to make forts work well and survive past the first few ambushes. Granted, I've never bothered trying to settle into a design that "works," preferring to try new things whenever I think of them; but my point is, once you get past the initial steep climb of the learning curve, it levels out onto an endless hillside with lots of room to dig magma towers and stuff.

[AutomataKittay]

My advice is more long-run help:

Play more than one or two fortresses before throwing in the towel.

I've been playing DF for over two years, and the vast majority has been on Fortress mode. I'm still learning how to make forts work well and survive past the first few ambushes. Granted, I've never bothered trying to settle into a design that "works," preferring to try new things whenever I think of them; but my point is, once you get past the initial steep climb of the learning curve, it levels out onto an endless hillside with lots of room to dig magma towers and stuff.

Agreed on this, I've played at least a dozen fortresses, some of them for pure experimentation with industrial speciality ( with invader off, so I can focus on making things work ), some for just designing things, and occasional pure military fortresses that lives off imports and exporting invader junks.

It's pretty good practice to have speciality fortresses for nothing but a particular thing to learn how it works. Also, pop cap is your friend!

[Scruffy]

Since most of the important stuff has already been said I won't repeat it

-Build plenty of doors. Design the fortress so that you can seal of parts of the fortress by forbbidding the doors. This will allow you to trap non-building destroyers and berserk dwarves.
-Learn to use burrows! Being able to get your civilians where you want them is important (expecially if you decide to do a resurrecting biome embark later on)
-Raising bridges. Build atleast 2 separating your mainstaircase from the outside and one separating caverns/magmaforges from the main fort. Never place the levers near the gates! Place them near the dining room / meeting hall.
-Traps are your friends. A few well placed cage traps or even stonefall traps can save the fort. One trap = one less goblin to take care of! (Just be careful. They block wagon access)

[Jing0000]

Once again thank you for all of the replies, this is one of the most helpful community's out of any game I have come across. the fort is doing okay so far. not great but ok. we ran out of food but the caravan arrived and I was able to trade some crafts for supplies, dug down a bit. found nothing interesting (I want flux stone but NONE of my worlds so far has had any) started a 2nd farm with the supplies and built a still as well. made it into spring. no signs of an ambush yet which makes me nervious. I have the newb pack but invaders are NOT off.

I have made a single drawbridge guarding the one entrance into the fort..and it's a wide one (started before I read the advice for narrow) I dug a 5 level deep channel Infront of it and dug my way back to the fort tunnels underneath, i then walled that section off....need advice on how to make that safer and now sure if the bridge is going the right way or not..which makes me feel very stupid..it does keep things out though. for now.

"-Learn to use burrows! Being able to get your civilians where you want them is important (expecially if you decide to do a resurrecting biome embark later on)
-Raising bridges. Build atleast 2 separating your mainstaircase from the outside and one separating caverns/magmaforges from the main fort. Never place the levers near the gates! Place them near the dining room / meeting hall. " these two i'm still struggling to learn correctly. mostly the burrow system.

aside form that the fort is still alive. if it makes it one more year i'll have met my goal for this. right now we have precious little of everything, i'm having what metal we have (of low quality) built into spike traps and wood into cage traps. I've got about 30 or so traps ready to go but running low on supplies again. migrants that have arrived have been very lowly skilled. got one fisher dwarf, unsure if he's worth using or not (we do have a small stream a bit away from the fort entrance). three dwarvs are drafted into the military but training has been slow..and thats about this..if the bridge works we will last long enough to starve to death...just send some dwarves out to forage but the delay of any activity is making me nervous about letting them out to long.

[filipmolnar]

I am not very experienced either, but what worked great for me:
- I bring turkeys at least 5 hens and a gobbler ->just 5 is enough to feed an early fort, so you don't have to worry about plants that much
- Dogs, both male and female, train them to be war dogs, and pasture some of them at your front door. No kobold will get past them. Take the resulting puppies underground (build sizable pen for them, so that they don't fight each other).
-Keep cats in check. I usually slaughter females and let males roam around.

The cats and turkey eggs should cover you food needs, bring booze though. Oh and deselect plump helmets from cooking in (z->kitchen->c on plump helmets), cooking destroys seeds. Be prepared for spam cancelations for planting, they won't find the seed bags sometimes, but you can always check in the kitchens(z menu), whether there really are no seeds left.