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[KingofstarrySkies]

I'm a horrible newb, and need to know how I should prepare. this includes what skills my dwarves have ((beside the military ones))
and what I should bring.
Post away!

[Aerie]

Laborer: Miner/Woodcutter
Laborer: Miner/Woodcutter
These two will dig out stone and cut down trees, and make good military dwarves in a pinch.

Leader: Appraiser/Organizer/Record Keeper/Judge of Intent/Negotiator
Will be your expedition leader, lawgiver and broker.

Doctor: Bone Doctor/Diagnostician/Surgeon/Suturer/Wound Dresser
Will tend to your injured dwarves. Make him your chief medical dwarf.

Builder: Building Designer/Mason/Carpenter/Mechanic/Engraver
Will build and engrave constructions and craft beds, tables, mechanisms, and such.

Crafter: Stone Crafter/Bone Carver/Wood Crafter/Metal Crafter/Furnace Operator
Will make goods for trade and turn coal/wood into fuel. Should eventually become your blacksmith.

Cook: Fisherdwarf/Fish Cleaner/Cook/Grower/Brewer
Will brew booze and cook food.

Embark Items:
2 copper picks
2 copper axes
1 iron anvil
1 bucket (for making farms underground)
At least 100 booze (25 of each is good)
At least 100 units of food
At least 10 plump helmet spawn and pig tail seeds

2 male dogs
2 female dogs
1 male cat
1 female cat

Some candlenut logs (if embarking on mountains/desert)
Some jet stone (if embarking on aquifer/deep soil)

Rest is up to you. EMBARK NEAR A RIVER OR BROOK!

[wierd]

I suggest packing extra food and booze, and 2 cats, one of each gender.  Beware of catsplosions though, and don't permit yourself any foibles about slaughtering them for food and leather.

Dogs are likewise a good choice.  The difference basically boils down to weather you prefer attack trainable animals over animals that police your stockpiles against vermin.

"Optimal embarking" is kind of a myth, and implies experienced players. I'd suggest sticking with the more generalized embark profile until you have scaled the game's learning curve. Adding a litte extra food and booze is helpful there. It will buy you a little extra buffer against stupid migrants who want to eat all your food and party all day, as well as buy you a little extra time in getting farming up and running efficiently. Those are both things that are invaluable to a new player.

[Torrasque666]

I believe LNP comes with DFhack, no? Just bring a few glass makers and a miner, one magma-safe building material, and then use DFhack to set up an infinite glass industry. Certain mods provide more options for glass use.

[Aerie]

use DFhack to set up an infinite glass industry.

This sounds like cheating...

[KingofstarrySkies]

I suggest packing extra food and booze, and 2 cats, one of each gender.  Beware of catsplosions though, and don't permit yourself any foibles about slaughtering them for food and leather.

Dogs are likewise a good choice.  The difference basically boils down to weather you prefer attack trainable animals over animals that police your stockpiles against vermin.

"Optimal embarking" is kind of a myth, and implies experienced players. I'd suggest sticking with the more generalized embark profile until you have scaled the game's learning curve. Adding a litte extra food and booze is helpful there. It will buy you a little extra buffer against stupid migrants who want to eat all your food and party all day, as well as buy you a little extra time in getting farming up and running efficiently. Those are both things that are invaluable to a new player.

One thing I can't stand is when migrants bring children.
I HATE THEM! Because they can't work! they take up beds and food and water.
ITS SO ANNOYING
EDIT: Aerie, can you include how good they are at the job? I don't know what to put it at.

[wierd]

That's because it is.  Cheaters never prosper.

I only use DFHack when performing science experiments, or when the embark is clearly broken by a glitch.

Children:
Don't forget how they like to start parties every 10 seconds, if you have statue gardens, zoos, or dining halls set up as happiness generators.  Little bearded bastards......

[Aerie]

EDIT: Aerie, can you include how good they are at the job? I don't know what to put it at.

Distribute the points evenly.

[Sutremaine]

Turkeys are good embark animals / raw materials. Bringing a whole animal is cheaper than bringing the ~8 units of meat you'd get from slaughtering one, and you can make crafts, weapons, shields, or more food from the rest of the butchery products. You can also make armour, but leather and bone aren't very good materials for that.

They also don't graze, so you can butcher one or two by the embark wagon to see you through the first couple of dwarven mealtimes and cram the rest into a cage until you're ready to take them to a more permanent or secure food processing area.

[edgefigaro]

Take 20 stone and 20 wood. Two picks and a training axe Two miners. 11 of each seed. Maybe an anvil, though, usually by the time you get an anvil going, it is fall and the caravan is about to arrive. Some food and booze. After that, take whatever you feel. There are three major things to learn as a newer player.

The first thing you need to do as a new player is learn how to farm indoors --> prepared meals and booze. There are other things to gain from farming, but if you can turn plump helmet spawn into dwarven wine, pig tail seeds into pig tail fiber bags, and rock nuts into salad roasts, you have a leg to stand on. 

After that, the mason workshop and the carpenter workshop have all sorts of useful things (mainly beds from the carpenter shop) that are really straightforward. The craftdwarf's shop can turn stone into rock pots, which are a superior form of barrels.

A step after food and simple industry is smithing and glass and various other more specific industries, but food and booze come first.

Lastly, instead of agonizing over all the skills to give to your dwarves, I recommend starting with no skills on anything or two miners and nothing else and then just manually assigning jobs to dwarves. Feel free to make a dwarf or two have all labors enabled, just to make sure that no job gets undone. Do that, and you begin to learn what you really want in your starting skills, why a point in teacher is priceless, why cook 5 is great and brewer 5 is junk, why that 3 skill ambusher with 1 or two in a bunch of other things is great too. But unskilled dwarves will still do anything as long as you manually enable the labors.

[Spectrelight]

Dwarves:
(all skills are novice unless otherwise stated)
2 miners
1 grower/woodcutter
1 grower/gatherer/brewer
1 mechanic/proficient building designer/appraiser/judge of intent
1 proficient mason
1 proficient carpenter
After the essential buildings are designed, have your mechanic make rock mechanisms on repeat; they're useful, worth a decent amount, and clear up clutter. Miners, carpenters and masons should be constantly busy, but farming is efficient enough that your growers can multitask. I don't bother cooking food until I have a large surplus, and by that time I've probably got a migrant with the skill.

Animals:
1 male cat, 1 female cat, 1 male dog, 3 female dogs, 1 turkey gobbler, 8 turkey hens. Pasture the cats on your food stockpiles, pasture one of the female dogs at your fort's entrance to detect thieves, and the rest of the dogs somewhere safe. Pasture some of the hens on top of nest boxes behind forbidden doors, this will keep your dwarves from harvesting eggs before they hatch.

equipment: 2 copper picks, 1 wood axe, 1 iron anvil, 8 nest boxes, ~40 meat and 60 drinks (go for variety here, it'll get you free barrels and make your dwarves happy). I take 12 plump helmet seeds and six of each other type, because I use 2x3 farm plots. I use remaining points to take plenty of sand (cheap, useful and comes with free bags), and some bituminous coal in case it's rare on the map.

[the woods]

You have to think about where you're going. Bring lumber if you're going to a wasteland, bring stone and pump-making stuff if you're going to an aquifer. If you want to live somewhere evil, savage, or hostile, have some military dwarves with weapons, and bring ores and fuel to make bronze suits out of, plus dogs and a doctor.

Just prepare for basic needs like food, digging / cutting tools, a hospital and trading, then think ahead a bit. Keep in mind that you can get flying firebreathing invaders, bowgoblin sieges, imps, kobold thieves, snatchers, mounted invaders, migrants, vampires, syndromes, necromancers, big cave creatures, human sieges, clothes rotting off, and caravans.

Early on I tend to bring a lot of lumber and leather. Both materials are versatile, cheap, and don't need a lot of work to be made into something.

[wierd]

I'd say that's mostly a personal play style though.

For instance, I abuse the dogpoop out of surface plants, and their lack of seasonal restrictions.

Just channel out the growing chamber cieling to get light indoors, then put constructed floor over the top to wall it in. Every bit as safe as a plump helmet farm, no seasonal restrictions! I ca then use the pigtails to make dwarven ale, instead of cloth fiber bags, becaue I use the absurd overabundance of ropereed for that.

[i2amroy]

I've been experimenting with this when I don't use a military embark:
4 miner/growers (I have modded plants with much longer grow times, so you need much more farming land to sustain a fortress)
1 miner/mason
1 stonecrafter (5 points left empty)
1 miner/trader (2 points in judge of intent, 1 in record keeper, 1 in appraiser, 1 in organizer, 5 in mining)

Then I embark with 7 picks and 1 axe in case I need it, an enable mining on everyone. The end result allows you to dig out a fortress very quickly, and I can usually have the majority of my fortress set up before the first wave of immigrants even arrive. If you disable mining on your stonecrafter once mid summer rolls around and start producing mugs/crafts, you can usually buy whatever you need from the first caravan as well.

[Replica]

Gypsum boulders, some kind of butcherable creature for tallow so you can make soap, plenty of seeds.