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[EvilBob22]

Another challenge some people do is a 0 point embark.  They spend no points on anything and arrive with just the wagon and two animals that pull it.  I haven't tried it, but it doesn't seem quite as daunting with wooden training axes being able to chop down trees.

[zach123b]

0 point embark is a fair bit fun, make a sort of outpost and get a hunter squad and hope the first caravan has an anvil and pick or order them and wait a year :x
there's also the minimalist challenge, no point spending aside from a copper ore and an anvil to start a full fort

but i try to use a different setup each game
typically i never bring a brewer cause i just give everyone brewing and setup 1-3 stills at the start as drinks don't have levels of craftsmanship

i wanna try that biscuit factory

[Tevish Szat]

0 point embark?  I have to say, the thought did cross my mind...  You'd have to embark somewhere nice, with lots of trees and plants to really make it work.  If you do, though, you can gather plants (getting you seeds, which you can then plant to start farming) and cut trees (Remove wagon, build carpenter's workshop, make two training axes).  Having played around in the Pony mod lately, I can say wooden above-ground forts are actually rather refreshing, considering you can get almost everything you need that way... There's no wooden option for Mechanisms though, which makes your defense options... wrestlers, basically, until you either get a pick or trade all those menacing wood spike-balls for weapons/armor/stone (you can just trade for stone and make mechanisms: glass gets you adequate weapon trap fill)

[Valikdu]

I usually take:
-Miner/broker
-Woodcutter/carpenter
-Mason/engraver
-Metalsmith
-Farmer/cook
-Soldier
-Doctor

Initially, if there's no threats, the soldier also gets a pick and digs.

[Larix]

The only skills i'd really consider bying past 'novice' at start would be the more tricky military ones - teacher, armour, dodge, shield. Everything else can be trained from scratch, although i like handing out single starting levels in  basic labours, for the convenience of pre-setting professions.
My usual setup is two miners, one woodcutter, one carpenter/mason, a smith/mechanic/architect and two farmers (both with herbalism/field farming, one with cooking, one with brewing). Everything else is enabled as needed and/or handed over to migrants. Whoever is idle when i have my third chair built (first two are used for communal dining) gets to be bookie/manager, whoever's first to the depot in autumn gets to be broker, whoever does the first diagnosis gets to be CMD.

I like me a minimal embark (one anvil, one lump of ore, one wagon, seven peasants), but only do it to spice up a no-trade embark; it's not much of a challenge if you simply buy everything you didn't bring upon embark in the first autumn or second year. Embarking with no food and drink is always fun, though.

[Findulidas]

I think its useful to take a broker with high appraisal and judging intent. Its very slow and pretty hard to train those skills and they can be very useful, especially from the first arriving caravan.
Atleast one grower and brewer, because you will def have one dwarf doing that from the start.
Wood cutting and mining is good to have from the start, if only because it makes the dwarves work so much faster.
Masonry, carpenter and stone crafter are useful skills. This will not only make the dwarves doing it work faster, but also increase the value and happiness of the dwarves seeing the end product. Also having masterworked furniture is always nice when the nobles start arriving.
Weapon/armorsmith are good skills as well. Armorsmith and weaponsmith greatly increases how good the weapons/armor created are as well as the value. This can greatly increase the ability of your militia.
Mechanic due to the strengths of traps and the way cage traps completely stop zombies/thralls, setting up cage traps quickly can be a life saver. Also generally useful for other things.

Less important:
Furnace operator/wood burner might be good if you are planning to do loads of smelting from the start, it increases the speed.
Metal crafter is good if you plan to churn out loads of silver/gold crafts.
Military skills are good, but usually its best to use the skill of the dwarves arriving on the later waves, because there almost always is someone with one high weaponsskill/armor/dodge etc among the first three waves and most dwarves will have low in some of them. Ex: it seems to me like its common to get a dwarf with high marksdwarf, dodge etc who is a hunter among the first 50 dwarves.
Medical skills are good, but often the dwarves tend to be lazy as hell with tending the wounded. If you want a good doctor then wait until you get one that gets happy by helping dwarves and does the first thing that comes to mind. If you happen to spend 5 points on diagnostics and the dwarf with the skills happen to be an annoying slacker who doesnt like to help people then you wasted those points.
Cook is nice, increasing the happiness for your dwarves. Its not essential though and by the second/third wave you can often easily make an unskilled dwarf a cook and let him skill up by himself.
Gem cutter is a helpful skill, if you need cloth and wood badly from the elves (not to mention those rare tame pets). Digging out gems and cutting them is perhaps the quickest way to gather tradable value with them.
Teaching/leader are useful in the military. I dont know to what degree they actually improve skill increases, but it seems that many tests have shown that they do infact have that effect. The problem is that you need both a high military skill to learn out and a high teaching/leader and if you increase them both there often is some dwarf arriving later which has much higher in the same military skill anyway.

[Gaybarowner]

All depends on the area but I just choose
2 miners
1 woodcutter
1 carpenter
1 mason with mechanics
2 farmers each one with brewing and cooking

and when migrants come most of them become farmers or if I am getting soldiers I make them engravers and screw pump operators for small attribute gains

[Noodz]

I think that at the hands of a decent players, a 0 point embark is not all that hard as long as you bring in enough material.

Skills which give you a good initial boost to your survivability are herbalist, grower, bonecrafter (bone armor), leatherworker (leather armor); though you need some initial butchering material for the last two, poultry is recommended. Military skills are also worth considering if early fights are expected, especially dodge, shield user and armor user. For quickly building wealth, a dedicated mechanic is good, and a good cook can easily flood a fortress with expensive meals.

As for hard to train skills, armorsmith and weaponsmith are always good investments. Every fort needs them, and it takes many metal bars to get a dabbling smith to legendary, 5 points in them help. Also, make sure armor/weaponsmithing remain their highest moodable skills, so when a mood hits them you get fancy artifacts.

[rawrcakes]

If I want to be safe, I usually bring

Leader - trading and bookkeeping, as well as carpentry
Commander - Leader, Teacher, Dodging. Doubles as a miner untill I get my military going.
Miner - usually has a few ranks of mining, as well as having architecture toggled on.
Farmer - growing and brewing.
Mason - mechanics, masonry, engraving, architecture.
Woodslayer - chopping, carpentry and wood burning.
Craftsdwarf - If i find a dwarf with appreciation for a good type of metal, I make this guy a weapon / armorsmith as well as metalcrafter with smelting enabled. If not, he's a stonecrafter.

This ensures I have people for the basic jobs I want done early on. I usually don't bring an early medic, because if I do, their skills usually rust before I get a chance of using them anyhow. I usually wait a year or so untill I get my water supply and soap makery done anyhow, so it's not much of a priority that early. Sure, it's hard to train, but I don't mind my dwarves having less-than-perfect encounters with the surroundings.

For more fun embarks, I tailor each dwarf to their likes and their psychology. A focused dwarf who loves rubies but is modest and reserved? Sounds like I've got myself a gemcutter and -crafter! A dwarf that loves tradition, is assertive, likes shields and dogs for their loyalty? Seems we've got a military commander! And a dwarf with a sharp intellect, a way with words and next to no empathy? Seems we have a expedition leader or a medic!

[tornado81]

I've looked over the list of professions twice and not once have I seen the "farmer" profession. Either I'm skipping over it or else it's not there at all.

[Gaybarowner]

I've looked over the list of professions twice and not once have I seen the "farmer" profession. Either I'm skipping over it or else it's not there at all.

farming itself is a catagory you are most likely thinking of growing skill

[entity0000410021940710090]

I prefer to embark with skills that make the game easy:

peasant
peasant
peasant
peasant
peasant
peasant
peasant

Seriously. They all level up so quickly I see no reason to put points into anything. Sometimes I'll put points into one of the dwarves to make trading a little cheaper earlier on and one day I'll try one dwarf with good military skills and teacher since I've heard that is the best way to get a decent military short of an abusive danger room (I still use the method of conscripting 40 dwarfs, ignoring them as they train constantly, then sending them out against a siege only to get butchered and if I'm lucky I'll get one or two survivors).

Instead I bring extra picks, axes, wood, a little flux, maybe some animals for extra food, a couple bars, and so on. Far too many times I've embarked and my 2 picks would get stolen by Keas, Kobolds, Macaque's and a bunch of other creatures. Or, one time I embarked next to a lava pit that was on the surface and fire imps quickly set the forest on fire and I had no choice but to abandon all of my stuff on the surface before the fire and them wiped out my fortress. I've also lost picks and axes from dumb dwarves falling off cliffs and poorly designating things (my bad) and if there is one thing I know, losing all your picks can be death (if you're terrible at the game as I am).

[PotatoOverdose]

While the crafting skills tend to vary based on my own mood/the embark locations, 3-5 of the dwarves always have proficient shield user.

Embark with/forge 2 shields a dwarf and have a nice early military. Dual shield dwarves have amazing survivability. Send them in first to "tank", then combine with miners/hunters/dogs/migrants to kill faster. Works well against everything except certain sieges and husks.

Quickest possible defense in my experience.

[Mushroo]

I just tried a zero point embark and bought out the entire first caravan, so I'd have to say it's not really that challenging, unless you're embarking in a haunted region or something.

[Randy Gnoman]

Peasants do fine.  If you want to invest in skills, invest in skills that give you early quality modifiers, or are hard to train.

For example:

Appraiser.  You can only train appraiser by having a dwarf trade at the depot, so if you want to know the value of items before the first caravan this can be a good investment.

Medical skills.  Lots of people will say this is silly- any dwarf can practice medicine, and you usually don't have lots of dwarves in the hospital.  But I always like to have at least one dwarf dedicated exclusively to medicine, to minimize the number of dwarves dying in their beds, and medical skills take forever and a day to train- so I usually bring along a medic in the starting seven.

Masonry & Carpentry.  This allows you to get better quality modifiers on your first furniture, which will make your first rooms somewhat nicer.  Stone detailing sort of falls into this category, but because smoothing a wall trains the skill without applying a quality modifier it's a little more trainable.

Metalsmithing skills.  Everything but furnace operator results in quality modifiers.  You might get immigrants who are Great weaponsmiths, but you might not- so it' handy to have someone around who's at least proficient.

Crafting skills.  Everything from weaving, to bone carving, to stone crafting, to jewelry.  Note that gem cutting doesn't produce many quality modifiers- but gem setting does.  Having low gem cutting can actually be slightly advantageous, because you produce fewer "large gems" which aren't always what you want.

When it comes to food production, I usually find that just assiging a few untrained dwarves to plant gathering provides enough food at the start.  You're bound to get more farmers than you need in immigrant waves, but because better farmers get larger crop stacks having a decent one early does make the food industry very easy.  Brewing doesn't apply any quality modifiers, so it's better simply to assign an untrained dwarf to that, but a good cook can certainly be a great way to build morale, and even to produce excellent trade goods.

Lots of people invest in mining & woodcutting- but those train up relatively quickly, and their only effect is on speed, so you might find that it's better to invest the points elsewhere.