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[weenog]

Never abandon.* Don't ever let a disaster or frustration drive you out, play each fortress until it dies.  Every accident, mistake, and incident of plain bad luck is an opportunity to learn and practice problem-solving -- but only if you stick around for the problem and try to solve it until you succeed, or lose.


*:except for when you install a new DF version that isn't compatible with old worlds, or a when a fortress becomes so secure that it's boring

[InfinityOrNone]

It has been said a billion times and a billion more, to the point of becoming our motto, but the single best piece of advice you can give anyone who wishes to play DF is this:

Losing Is Fun

[donfuan]

My best advise is: the outside is dangerous terrain for dwarves.

First come the thieves and steal stuff = unhappy thoughts.
Then come the snatchers and take your children = more unhappy thoughts.
Then come the ambushes and kill your woodworkers/fishers/hunters = even more unhappy thoughts.
If that didn't cause the first tantum spiral to ruin your fort: finally come the sieges.

If you made it that far, consider that fort a success and start reading about fort defensive strategies. Build your next fort accordingly and plan ahead!
You will find new obstacles on each try and will learn and learn and learn.

[Ragnar Gullfaxi]

Wow, super awesome responses.

I found a pretty ok starting location with a waterfall that really helps with a design I have been playing around with. Certainly been done before I assume.. but here it is!

Fairly simple setup. Depending on who enters my trade depot, I can choose to close the 'Bridge of Judgement' and then open up floodgate A untill everything is... clean. Then I can open up Floodgate B.. let it all wash away and then eventually open up the Bridge again.

We'll see how this actually works in practice

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[wierd]

Only 1 tile wide for the flood control channels? ....hope you are patient, or are using highly pressurized water.

It will otherwise take a considerably long time to fill.  Good for elves though. Gives them plenty of time to think about their choices in life....

[Ragnar Gullfaxi]

Gah, just gave it a try..

It doesnt take long to fill.. but draining it seems to take an age. might need to go back to the drawing board with this one methinks

[Sound]

Don't get too close to the dwarves, in the sense that you are annoyed when they inevitabely die a horriffic death. I solved that problem with the institution of "peon" system (the idea blatantly stolen from another user here, which i dont remember the name of), where a small elite of crafters and miners are well protected and nicknamed, while the rest is a homogenous mass of peons, doing unskilled labour like brewing, shearing, masonry, hauling, and acting as a militia, with shifts switching between training and hauling.

This is of course another variant of the most common mantra; losing is fun.

Also, dont delay with making your fort able tongo into lockdown mode. Gobbos being able to freely wander down to your meeting hall is an experiene you only have once, before making sure to fort up properly at all times.

[wierd]

Gah, just gave it a try..

It doesnt take long to fill.. but draining it seems to take an age. might need to go back to the drawing board with this one methinks

Consider redirecting the water down a vertical channel, to build up pressure in it, then making it go off the edge of the map through a fortification slit.  That way you can teleport a goodly portion of the water away.

[WanderingKid]

Getting the Depot down that far is a PITA, though.  Easier to build a cistern above ground and pump-stack fill it.  Open 4/5 floodgates at once and power wash the elves.

Also, use vertical Grates to catch the goods without keeping the water in.

[Anathema]

Dig deeper, mine all the metals - and if you encounter an upright weapon, deconstruct it to claim its power.

[Dust]

abandon all hope

[Tevish Szat]

"Read the Wiki".  If that's considered cheating for this exercise, my advice would have to either be "Cage traps" or "Keep the caverns SEALED" Getting a functioning military is one of the hardest things to do as far as 'basics' go (at least without resorting to Danger Rooms.  Even then, unless you make mechanisms and training spears before some "basics", you'll likely still encounter some hostilities before the Danger Room is up), and an early ambush or Forgotten Beast can easily doom the entire fortress before you really have a chance to start learning how to run and manage one.  Cage Traps are cop-outs I know, but they're less of one than they once were (thanks to wagons producing a deployment problem), and working on military matters is much more enjoyable when you've internalized fortress-building and production.

[wierd]

Weapon traps can be more versatile than cagetraps, especially if you don't quite feel like lining the entryway 7 ways to sunday, since they auto-reset themselves.  Cagetraps are oneshot wonders, in every way concievable. (But they can't spring on ginormous creatures, like FBs, unless the creature is unconcious or sufficiently stunned.) Weapon traps however, can, as far as I know. Just put the weapon traps in a rectangle around an indestructable artifact building, (like an artifact quern, or millstone), so that the FB focuses al its attention there, while the weapon trap relentlessly beats on it. I'd suggest using actually good weapons in such a trap though, since FBs tend to be rather... shall we say... "resistant".

Another option, is mechanism based droppable floor, with a hole in it for said artifact building to avoid being smashed out of existence. Lure the FB in, seal up the exits, drop the roof on it. Possible alteration, now that dropped items do damage, is to use a retracting bridge with dump zones on top, loaded with harvested clay boulders, or green glass blocks since those are infinite in supply. Just make sure that *all* routes into the fortress are sealable with BRIDGES, since floodgates and doors can be smashed by building destroyers, and the caverns often have flying beast people. The stories of angry caveswallow people are the things of legend.

This tactic also works good for taking care of gremlins, if you have them. They just love levers, so give them lots of random noble suicide levers in the caverns, and enjoy the spectacle.

[Just an aside, I remember reading a story about modding bugbats to be trainable as war animals, and how devistatingly horrible they were, since they were so tiny. It makes me wonder what putting [pet_exotic] and [trainable] on bees would be like.]

[evictedSaint]

One piece of advice? Learn the

• rders.  I've lost an embarrassing number of dwarves to frustration for when they wouldn't haul garbage and the like from the surface.

[InfinityOrNone]

Cotton Candy is a powerful gamble. If you do things right, you've got weapons and armour that'll make a new recruit into an avatar of destruction. If you do things wrong, the Clowns will come, and nothing shall remain after their passing.