Started a dwarf embark on a point into an inland sea. Was planning on putting up a black tower and filling it with mages. Still working on starting the tower and it's year three, but I do have he point walled off and a decent gatehouse. Food, booze and clothes industries set up. Starting to train some military and putting my first few mages (immigrants) to work with them.
I got a windkin and a fire mage (lvl 2) and I put them in rigid scaleplate for down. I thought some fire protection might be good.
So they were training on the beach (also nice with a fire tosser) and some giant crabs came ashore. The fire mage went after one and got into a real battle in which he got pretty beat up and lost his foot. My military commander, who is in mithril and steel over assorted top leather, and waving a bloodsteel battle axe, charged in and diced the crab with two swings (only lvl 3 axe so far). The fire mage healed up in my hospital in a few weeks, and walks slowly, but he's destined for my gatehouse anyway, if I can keep him from being too crabby.
Meanwhile my windkin, a mere level 1, took off after another giant crab solo. He dodged one attacks (nimble little guy) and slapped the crab with a spray of webs, walked over, and went into some weird martial arts stance and thrust his hand into its brain. End of fight. I don't know what to think.
I am planning on better armor for them though. And they both get the gatehouse. It's paved so fire should be containable. Just bought a couple slade turrets to help out too.
I had one titan, a firebreathing flying kestrel, that was a problem. I ended up savescumming. He was probably going to wipe me out based on his early actions and since he just flew past my defenses, but he got to my entrance and the game crashed. I think it had something to do with what the merchants there at the time had in their caravan. When he flamed them, boom and crash.
After sleeping on it, I went back to the last seasonal save. The titan reappeared and this time I dfhacked him. I want to try the magic system more. That was around the end of year 2.
I got one goblin ambush after that, but it arrived just in time to shoot at the last merchant guard entering my gate. They were human merchants and one steel wearing guard with his firearm chased them off and survived, barely. Rusty arrows versus gunpowder, even outnumbered about 6 to 1 he managed.
It's now early winter of 103. My population is 119 adults (136 total) of 200 cap. I have 3 active mages (an earthkin turned up too) and beginning to make some metal armor with my level 1 armorsmith. At least he's a smith guild, so he should improve fairly well. I haven't got the new training system up yet. My experience is only with the earlier library system so far. Handling moods fine (so far), but haven't gotten anything useful beyond decoration. Lost one baby dwarf to an accident to date. Playing all on hard except mining. Don't like black lung, but could tolerate that. The metal wraiths are too nasty too early for my taste. If Mason's Guild miners were immune to that trance I might go with hard mining.
Getting the mechanics from vanilla down better really makes a difference. Especially quantum storage using minecarts. My stockpiles and production areas are much more compact now. Using an above ground well for the moment (good practice for the new kobcamp!) since only need a bit of water for patient care. I have a little pond in my point for that. Will do some desalination later, I think, and make a proper water tank below ground. Or maybe I will do some stupid dwarf engineering and pump it up some z levels and put it in my tower so the mages can take showers.
It's now a city and it's called (of course) Udirurdim: Blacktower. I see a bunch of obsidian under the ocean to my northeast. Soon.
Hmm, I wonder if I can pour magma offshore and make my own obsidian island to build the tower on. Plenty of Blood of Armok to try with already. What's missing so far this embark is Tears of Armok for water.