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[NoirRaven]

Warning : there is a newbie spaz out ahead

I've played DF a few times but never past the first year, since I've always gotten bored before that or something similar. Now I've finally gotten past it (by finding something to do) and just gotten a migrant wave of 35 dwarves. I have no idea what to do now D:. None of them have any decent skills (6 fish cleaners in a desert that only has one empty murky pool.)

I could draft some of them into the military, but i haven't even got enough metal to make equipment for my first squad of 5 dwarves, let alone more. Most of what I've found so far is lignite, with a single vein of Tetrahedrite, nothing more.

I'm suddenly at a loss as to what to do. I don't think giving every dwarf their own 2x2 bedroom will work anymore. What do i do for sleeping arrangements? being a desert, wood is super scarce. I don't even have or produce enough food to keep a population this big going. I think I'm about to have my first instance of !FUN! if i dont figure this out


TL;DR  :  I'm Spazzing out because of a huge migrant wave i wasn't prepared for.

[AutomataKittay]

Not enough wood implies dorm rooms, you can have around between four to ten dwarves per dorm bed ( I'd aim for lower end since dwarves tend to sleep in clusters ).

If you have non-grazers, then you can make up an army using leather shield and bone crossbow and bolts, taking advantage of any defensive positions you can find. This' my usual way of forming an militia to back up professional soldiers, but it's pretty useful for no-metal embarks too.

Food isn't an issue if you have big enough farm, around 1 farmer every 25 farm tile with nothing but farming and roughly between one to three ( with legendary farmers ) dwarves supported per farming tile for plump helmet year-around, including brewing. Less for above-ground berries, but still viable.

[Lich180]

Take a few beds, set them as dorms, that should handle sleeping  arrangements.
Then start a few migrants farming, get brewing going full time, make some rock pots for storage.

If you want a basic milita, copper will do fine. Each tetrahedrite boulder makes 4 copper bars, and some silver. Lignite is a crappy version of bituminous coal, but will make coke still. Hopefully you have a spare log, so you can make a piece of charcoal to start fuel production.

If you had/have animals, butcher a few, make bone crossbows, and bam, instant militia.

Typing from my phone, so I can't see most of my errors :p

Edit: of you really need logs, carve out your soil layer, and penetrate the caverns to get the spores for fungi wood

[KtosoX]

Got too many dwarfs? You need more wood? I have a perfect solution for you!
1. Get some copper or silver weapons (preferably blunt).
2. Dig down till you hit a cave.
3. Put those fish cleaners and cheese makers in to work.
4. PROFIT!

[Jetman123]

Dwarves learn things by doing. The fear of migrants is something I'll never understand. More dwarfpower is a good thing. Likewise, I'll never understand the mindset that a dwarf that arrives with labor X must do labor X forever. Dwarves are adaptable.

Do you lack masons? Turn the fish cleaning labor off on a dwarf, put him as a mason, and set his custom job title (with y) as "Mason". He will do mason-y things and learn how to be a mason. He'll get pretty good at it, too, if he's the only mason who's building things.

Right now, dwarves are able to learn skills at an insanely fast rate compared to real life. Without a teacher, in the real world, it takes a lot more time to re-invent a skill yourself, but a dwarf is apparently supplied with the inbuilt knowledge of how to engrave pictures, make complex mechanisms, construct furniture or hollow mugs or blow glass or farm plump helmets from birth. Use it. Put dwarves to work outside their specialties and don't worry about it in the slightest.

Any migrants you don't have a use for, just put them to use in an area which is undermanned. Likewise, if you have a shortage in the militia, simply change some poorly skilled dwarf's profession. It is entirely valid and not "wrong" for you to conscript random farmers into the militia in a time of crisis or to replace losses. You have to use what you have.

Likewise, for a militia, you don't even need weapons. Dwarves can kill snatchers by dogpiling on them and wrestling, and sometimes wrestling can be quite surprising. If you are backed into a corner, don't just watch as death comes. Have your dwarves fight with their bare hands. While you build them simple copper spears (spears are some of the best choices for weaponry with poor metals, for a variety of reasons) they can spar unarmed and build up the wrestling and dodging skills they need later. Dwarfpower for your militia is not a bad thing, because, again, dwarves learn by doing. Change their custom title to "Militiaman". Put them to work learning how to wrestle. Then put them to work learning how to stab things.

Think like a military commander, not like a matchmaker in a feudal Asian society. Both manpower and skilled labor is important. Work to develop skilled labor, but do not be afraid of cross-training. Specialization is for insects. Your dwarves can serve any labor you put them to.

[NoirRaven]

Thanks everyone, i have tried to deal.

I have :

mined out the entire residential level into separate, large dormitories

doubled my farms, including making outside ones in safe area

reshuffled the dwarves labours, so i now have several stills and workshops working flat out to prepare the food and such things, and masons arbitrarily smoothing all the stone everywhere to level up.

made a wrestler squad in the surplus leather armour i have

I have two dwarves out hunting, but im not sure if they willl find anything in the wastes. I need them to find animals for bones.


So i am handling it after my moment of panic

[KtosoX]

...
I have two dwarves out hunting, but im not sure if they willl find anything in the wastes. I need them to find animals for bones.
...

Bones? Why would you need those? What you need are maces for your soldiers.

[Urist McDwarfFortress]

masons arbitrarily smoothing all the stone everywhere to level up.

Smoothing stone trains the "stone detailing" skill, not masonry.

made a wrestler squad in the surplus leather armour i have

Wrestlers are kind of useless in the current version. Equipping them with any weapon will make them much more effective. It sounds like you have a bit of copper. Copper hammers FTW!

So i am handling it after my moment of panic

Lol! Just in time for the next panic! You will soon find that Dwarf Fortress is a Crisis Aversion Simulation! You will be dealing with some sort of crisis almost all the time.

[AutomataKittay]

...
I have two dwarves out hunting, but im not sure if they willl find anything in the wastes. I need them to find animals for bones.
...

Bones? Why would you need those? What you need are maces for your soldiers.

Probably my advice for bone crossbow and bolts, those are useful if you don't have enough metal for everyone, though having metal is certainly better

[NoirRaven]

...
I have two dwarves out hunting, but im not sure if they willl find anything in the wastes. I need them to find animals for bones.
...

Bones? Why would you need those? What you need are maces for your soldiers.

Probably my advice for bone crossbow and bolts, those are useful if you don't have enough metal for everyone, though having metal is certainly better

yeah, i want to churn out some bolts and crossbows since im still having no luck finding metals (although i have enough coke now to drown in)

[P(ony)SI]

...
I have two dwarves out hunting, but im not sure if they willl find anything in the wastes. I need them to find animals for bones.
...

Bones? Why would you need those? What you need are maces for your soldiers.

Probably my advice for bone crossbow and bolts, those are useful if you don't have enough metal for everyone, though having metal is certainly better

yeah, i want to churn out some bolts and crossbows since im still having no luck finding metals (although i have enough coke now to drown in)

You said you found a vein of tetrahedrite, correct?
Tetty can be smelted into 4 bars of copper, which can be used for weapons and armor, along with a bar of silver. Best not to use silver though; it's the worst metal for armor and weapons, excluding war hammers.

[urmane]

Not much more than a n00b myself, but:
- Go down.  It's very fast to start sinking up/down staircase shafts to get to new layers.  Dig out some arms in simple search patterns, pulling out those gem clusters you find and putting jewelers to work - at least you'll have something to trade to caravans.  With luck you'll also find water and an alternative fuel / energy source.  You mentioned being in a desert - I'm thinking lots of traps loaded with serrated glass discs and glass spikes.
- Make all the spares masons, and put them to work building constructed walls, towers, bridges, etc for defense.

[gunnarig]

You are wrong about the silver. althogh useless for handheld weapons exluding hammers. Silver crossbow bolts are really deadly even more so than copper or iron recent science found this out in a EXTENSIVE testing on diffrent bolts vs diffrent armors. so silver is nice even if you can find iron and a godsend if you just have copper.

[JibberZen]

Certainly an unpleasant predicament, but it could always be much worse funner.

As others have pointed out a system of dorm rooms would be good for sleeping arrangements, plus digging down to the first cavern level should solve several of your problems (assuming a particularly nasty forgotten beast doesn't show up), and I suppose some militias of drunken/hungover dwarves trained in unarmed combat is better than nothing at all.

My advice (as someone with a rather successful desert fortress) would be to work on an underground reservoir to fill using a screw pump to purify water from the murky pool if it is large enough to supply any water at all. If there isn't much water in the pool, just use a screw pump to move it into a safe area to farm in. I would also strongly advise making as much of the fortress underground as possible and cover the stairs leading into it with hatches to keep it safe from intruders/sieges as long as you toggle the hatches to 'forbidden' and 'closed tightly'.

Your primary goal at first should probably be defense and reaching the first cavern level though. Just be sure to make the only access points to the stairs leading up to the main fortress be protected by something like a drawbridge over a shallow pit (make the ramp up out of it on the side opposite of the stairs). That way if something fun shows up you can raise the bridge (make it raise towards the stairs to form a wall filling the tunnel/hall) and wait for it to go away for a while.