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[Id Utalrisen]

What would you say is the most difficult, and least difficult starting locations are?

In my opinion
Militarily, easiest to hardest:
-(Easy) Calm Island with no neighbors
-
-
-
-
-
-(Normal) Wilderness with goblin neighbor
-
-
-
-
-
-

-(Hard) Terrifying, with necromancer and goblin neighbors


How would you change/add to this? I'm sure a lot of newer people would like to know what to try next after 'mastering' a certain difficulty. I suppose economic difficulty could be another chart too (Dense forest with a lot of water and metals and supplies (easy) to rocky wasteland with no tools and low supplies (hard)

[Drazinononda]

Don't forget the other aspects of biomes. A terrifying woodland is not equivalent to a terrifying glacier. Also, many factors that affect the biome on the surface also affect other important features as well; for example, interplay of volcanism, mountain ranges, metal ores and aquifers can make the difference between a desert with an aquifer and iron ore -- which I'd call easy -- and a desert embark with no water where weapons and armor must be imported.

[itg]

I doubt there's anything harder than the worlds from this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98447.msg2876542#msg2876542. Dwarves bursting into flame within 2 seconds of embark, etc.

As far as normal-ish worlds go, there are tons of independent features which can increase the difficulty. To name a few:

-Hostile biome (e.g. terrifying)
----evil weather, particularly husk clouds
----reanimating effect
----Deadly wildlife
----Extreme temperatures
-No minerals
-No trees
-No caverns (that one's a worldgen option)
-Aquifer
-Hostile neighbors
-No elves or humans to trade with
-Extinct home civilization

Obviously, a site with every "hard" feature will be the hardest. If you're hoping to rank sites in terms of difficulty, maybe you could assign the relevant site features a difficulty value (with negative numbers for beneficial features like volcanoes), then compare the sums. It wouldn't be perfect, of course, but it's a start.

Honestly, though, that's a waste of effort unless you just like to rank things (who doesn't, now and then?). If you felt like you "mastered" your last site, choose the next one with one or two more "hard" features.

[laularukyrumo]

"Aquifer" is also a misleading source of difficulty. It makes it slightly harder to gather some resources, but if you bring along enough wood or stone for a pump and some walls, aquifers are a joke, and both an infinite source of water (drowning traps anyone?) and a quantum water sink (draining the ocean anyone?). If there's a single tile of clay on your site, you have literally everything you need--dismantle your wagon, you have three logs. Burn one for charcoal, build a kiln out of it, gather one unit of clay, dismantle kiln, rebuild out of clay. Turn the other two logs into a corkscrew and a pipe section, use the charcoal as fuel and make a clay block, and you have a pump. Voila.

And if you hit a site with no trees, no clay, and no wood/stone brought in initial supplies, and a 9-layer aquifer, you can just cave-in the entire aquifer.

[Blue_Dwarf]

for example, interplay of volcanism, mountain ranges, metal ores and aquifers can make the difference between a desert with an aquifer and iron ore -- which I'd call easy -- and a desert embark with no water where weapons and armor must be imported.

I can't help but wonder what are the dwarves doing in the desert in the first place?

[Drazinononda]

for example, interplay of volcanism, mountain ranges, metal ores and aquifers can make the difference between a desert with an aquifer and iron ore -- which I'd call easy -- and a desert embark with no water where weapons and armor must be imported.

I can't help but wonder what are the dwarves doing in the desert in the first place?

Obviously, the navigator was sober.

[Ubiq]

What would you say is the most difficult, and least difficult starting locations are?

Most difficult-
Evil glacier with aquifers.

Least difficult -
Calm savana.

Five different types of animals appear on the glacier (two exclusive to evil areas); four of them are lethal in their base form. Savannas have four possible animals with only the horse being particularly dangerous and it'll steer clear of your dwarves for the most part. Sure, you have macaques and buzzards to deal with, but theft is a minor issue compared to having dwarves torn in half by large carnivores.

[Itnetlolor]

for example, interplay of volcanism, mountain ranges, metal ores and aquifers can make the difference between a desert with an aquifer and iron ore -- which I'd call easy -- and a desert embark with no water where weapons and armor must be imported.

I can't help but wonder what are the dwarves doing in the desert in the first place?

Obviously, the navigator was sober.

Maybe he was drunk on something else. Spice melange.

He who controls the Spice, controls Dune.

Be wary, for the sandworms of Shai-Hulud reign over this land.

[Catsup]

i rank difficulty in this order, note that i excluded aquifiers since those only tend to be a major problem for new players, and tend to be an annoyance rather than an actual threat even in a terrifying glacier, so long as you have enough supplies to last until breaching it.  I also excluded resource scarcity since those also only tend to be an annoyance, i can play cavern fortress and survive indefinitely without ever needing to go to the surface.


casual

serene
calm
mirthful
joyous wilds (with no surrounding untamed)
wilderness
untamed wilds
^^^any of the above + 3 or more towers
sinister
haunted
terrifying
sinister/haunted with +3 or more towers
terrifying with +3 or more towers

FUN

note: for mixed biome embarks difficulty level is mainly the one you build your fort on, but may count as very close in difficulty to the harder. For example, I consider my current haunted/wilderness mixed embark to be more difficult than my previous terrifying embark because the evil weather created husks instead of just making dwarves vomit blood.

[Solon64]

Aquifers on a glacier are a horrifying threat.

I mean, I like popsicles as much as the next guy, but dwarves don't seem to like them as much, particularly when its a dwarf flavored popsicle.

*shudders, and not from the cold of the glacier*

[slothen]

Aquifers on a glacier are a horrifying threat.

I mean, I like popsicles as much as the next guy, but dwarves don't seem to like them as much, particularly when its a dwarf flavored popsicle.

I haven't tried this, but I wouldn't think it would be so bad.  In fact I think it would be preferable to a glacier with no aquifer, and the aquifer itself would be easier to deal with on a glacier than doing it in a temperate biome.  But again, haven't tried it.

[Kagerus]

Last time I set fortress in Jungle biom with goblin neighbors, after some time i was attacked  by army of goblins, something about 70 goblins, 10 trolls most on some mounts. It was when my militarry was still only ten dwarfs. If i settle on isolated island  goblins still attack me ? And how strong their attacks will be ?

P.S
Sorry for my english if i made mistakes. It's not my native language.

[EvilBob22]

Last time I set fortress in Jungle biom with goblin neighbors, after some time i was attacked  by army of goblins, something about 70 goblins, 10 trolls most on some mounts. It was when my militarry was still only ten dwarfs. If i settle on isolated island  goblins still attack me ? And how strong their attacks will be ?

If you settle on an island with no neighbors, then you won't be attacked.  But, if there are goblins on the island, it is just like when you settle on the main land.

P.S
Sorry for my english if i made mistakes. It's not my native language.

No problem, it is easy enough to understand you.

[Catsup]

Aquifers on a glacier are a horrifying threat.

I mean, I like popsicles as much as the next guy, but dwarves don't seem to like them as much, particularly when its a dwarf flavored popsicle.

*shudders, and not from the cold of the glacier*

not really, just dig stairs down first to make sure water adequately floods and no dwarves get encased in ice (you WILL die if you channel directly down). If in doubt, simply dont expose dug out aquifiers to above-ground, keeping aquifier-breaching operations below ground makes it the same as any other biome's aquifier. Aquifier breaching may actually be easier since the freezing and digging method becomes available on a glacier in addition to cave-ins and pumping, it just takes some work to wall back up again after youre done.

[Kagerus]

Last time I set fortress in Jungle biom with goblin neighbors, after some time i was attacked  by army of goblins, something about 70 goblins, 10 trolls most on some mounts. It was when my militarry was still only ten dwarfs. If i settle on isolated island  goblins still attack me ? And how strong their attacks will be ?

If you settle on an island with no neighbors, then you won't be attacked.  But, if there are goblins on the island, it is just like when you settle on the main land.

P.S
Sorry for my english if i made mistakes. It's not my native language.

No problem, it is easy enough to understand you.

Thank you for answer, it's really helpful. I've already lost two times because of goblins.

//
Catsup how you solve a problem of wood on glaciers ?