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[Spacespinner]

Never liked evil biomes before but I wanted to try something a lot harder since my forts only fall these days when I do something like release the circus onto the outside world to fight off invasions, and forget to lock a door somewhere connected to the outside.

I lasted 5 minutes (4 dwarves fell asleep near the wagon while the miners were digging out a home). They literally saw the thrips skeleton, ALL fell asleep, then got promptly one-shot one by one. Since I didn't stand a chance with 3 dwarves against two thrips, zombie dwarves and a swarm of giant bird zombies, I just abandoned.

Any advice? Bring LOTS of wood on embark? Choose soil so you can entrench yourself faster? Build a wall around you the moment you start? Massive trap group? Containment room before allowing migrants in?

[Spacespinner]

15 minutes that time. Still an improvement.

[Snaake]

I hear the fastest way to get safe is to dig down a level to get your dwarves underground, then dig around and under your wagon so as to cave-in it, and all it's contents, down one level. Remove all ramps to the surface, and you're already safe from non-fliers. Then wall in ASAP.

[Lich180]

Depending on the area, I bring several picks (2 doesn't cut it sometimes, especially when undead ogres or thralling clouds are present), dig a 2-wide trench leaving a 5x5 square for the wagon and remove the ramps closest to the wagon, then dig an access tunnel that gets blocked off. If there are too many trees, I make the trench 3 wide.

Then just dig down past your trench, and start your initial safehouse.

I also usually bring stone for blocks, using those for walls, roof, bridge and mechanisms for access should I need it. My current terrifying embark had a few giant sponge in the river, so the hordes of zombies were distracted long enough for me to burrow to the map edge, construct a small building there using raising bridges and walls so I can force caravans to only use the safe path to me.

[Rainbows]

Hermetically seal everything. Got fortifications?Put floodgates on the outside side so that mist  and other clouds can't come in a husk your archers.
Make a tunnel for the caravan and try and make the caravan spawn near it. That way they are less likely to be murdered or husked. Put a roof on any aboveground structure. Get some traps quick.

[Lich180]

Doors work just as well as floodgates, and don't require a mechanism and lever to open them

[wierd]

zombie dwarves are building destroyers though, IIRC.

Bridge works best, but as you said, needs mechanisms and lever.

[Sutremaine]

Another way of getting underground quickly: After digging a safety trench*, deconstruct the wagon (after setting a meeting zone in the immediate area) and ramp out the 5x5 area of scattered goods. Finally, cover the pit. A 5x5 bridge takes the fewest materials (7), but takes longer to complete. Five 1x3 bridges and one 2x5 bridge costs an extra item of building material, but will be completed more quickly for having six dwarves working at once.

Now that your items are away from the elements, get everyone underground and seal off the access tunnel. Congratulations, you now have all your dwarves, items, and animals completely isolated from the surface. You'll eventually need access for migrants, traders, and liaisons / diplomats, but for now you can get started in peace.

A resurrecting biome will need a few finishing touches. The grazing wagon-pullers will need to be either fed or atomsmashed, and if you choose the former then they only need to be fed until the first traders arrive, at which point you can shove them into a cage and sell them.

*Skip this if the first batch of wildlife is flying -- the trench does nothing.

[Tevish Szat]

I hear the fastest way to get safe is to dig down a level to get your dwarves underground, then dig around and under your wagon so as to cave-in it, and all it's contents, down one level. Remove all ramps to the surface, and you're already safe from non-fliers. Then wall in ASAP.

This seems like the best opening.  Gets your stuff underground fast.  The method of deconstructing the wagon and channeling might be safer, but the principle is the same.

A few tips

DON'T bring any domestic animals on your embark.  If your biome is automatically reanimating, a meat industry is suicide.  Until you know for sure that your biome is NOT reanimating, atomsmash all pets/livestock that come to your fort.  The bad thoughts are worth it.
DON'T expect help from caravans.  They have to get through the death clouds and zombies to you, and you need a 3-wide path all the way to the map edge sitting open to get wagons, which is suicide.  Leave your gates closed and accept that you'll get traders-on-foot if anything.
DON'T try to trade time for embark points.  Even in savage lands you can usually afford to bring a couple stones and logs and a lump of tetrahedrite rather than two axes and two picks, saving a lot of points.  In evil turf, you need at least your picks on 1 Granite, not after you've built three workshops on the surface, burned wood, smelted, and forged.
DON'T build anything important out of wood.  Wood is more vulnerable to undead building destroyers.  A stone door will protect you from zombies, a wood one won't.

DO have at least one trained military dwarf, preferably with equipment, to defend your position while you seal up
DO build lots of doors across your hallways that you can use to lock regions of the fort off from one another in case something gets past your outer defenses
DO build multiple inter-level connections so zombies on the central stair don't paralyze the fort.
DO defend yourself with raising bridges and leave them raised until needed.
DO remember that fliers can generally fly as undead, and plan your defenses accordingly

[WanderingKid]

Not sure if these help (or hurt) but I'm currently youtubing a single pick challenge in just such an embark.  Thread is here:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=129994.0

So far they've ended poorly, either due to a tantrum spiral caused because we couldn't get rid of the dead fast enough or the latest was due to fliers getting into the aquifer piercing and laying waste to my dwarves.

My most recent attempt, FurnaceClans, was able to get downstairs quickly and by waiting out the flyers for a walking variety of local wildlife we were able to seal ourselves up.

It's about speed and then patience.  Speed for immediate defenses.  Dig a layer down and get your dwarves under cover, blockading up the way in.  From there, you have time.  Be patient in your approach and move slowly until opportune moments, and then be efficient during those moments.  Eventually you'll be able to work in peace for a bit.

For example, once you're downstairs you can prep a moat around your cart from below using upward stairways, and wait for a lack of fliers.  Once the fliers are gone, channel the upper layer from below, recover your goods to your staging area with an 'everything' stockpile, and then re-seal that access (if cave ins and building on the surface aren't seeming to work for you).

Dig to the edge from below for caravan access and make sure you keep a bridge between you and the opening you'll eventually need to open for the map edge.  Build when it seems safe, such as the local wildlife is on the other side of the map.  Keep an eye on things and drag your dwarves inside at the first sign of possible trouble.  You will eventually build what you need, and can use the time down below to strengthen your fort's inner workings.  Also, one trick I've learned is when you're doing a surface project like that and need to be able to immediately move people (like your masons working on walls) put them all in the same military unit.  This lets you instantly station them somewhere safer as needed instead of waiting on them. 

Terrifying embarks are nothing more then balancing time vs. need.  It's one of the more fun aspects of the game until you get settled in and reasonably defended, then it's pretty normal (except for the whole butchering/bone industry going out the window).

[Sutremaine]

The boundaries between embark tiles aren't straight, and even a single-biome embark can have a few scraps of the neighbouring biome. You could have a site that's nominally single-biome but with a few tiles of non-resurrecting land, and work on your transport network by making animal processing nearly as efficient as a fortress where you can put the butchery and refuse stockpiles anywhere.

[ZzarkLinux]

Any advice? ... entrench yourself faster? Build a wall around you the moment you start? Massive trap group? Containment room before allowing migrants in?

Terrifying embarks are nothing more then balancing time vs. need.  It's one of the more fun aspects of the game until you get settled in and reasonably defended, then it's pretty normal (except for the whole butchering/bone industry going out the window).

WanderingKid has it.
You want everything, but ZomBiomes put you one a timelimit.
The challenge/timelimit is measured by the number of zombies on the surface.
(And a bonus timelimit is how fast you can chamber-and-butcher you're two starting grazers before they starve)

- Yes, you want a Garbage Chute/Smasher. But if you try to build one too early, then a dozen migrants zombify onto the surface while you build it.
- Yes, you want a military-butcher system, but that takes too long, so instead start with butchery chambers where you can butcher/harvest/seal 1-at-a-time.
- Yes, you want Raised Bridge Airlocks, but if you don't have a simple Door control mechanism then ... again ... your zombie count will increase because the bridge takes too long to build/setup/open.

Also, if you're the kinda person who obsesses over self-challenge things, then you should budget a lot of personal time to the game because ZomBiomes can be addicting. The zombie count is almost like TAD's doomsday clock ... except your fort dies to insanity-spiral instead of squishing into 5 Z-Levels.

[Spacespinner]

zombie dwarves are building destroyers though, IIRC.

Bridge works best, but as you said, needs mechanisms and lever.

Oh f**k. Just what I need >_<

Quick question: Since they have the oppose life tag, could I zombify/thrall the caverns or the circus? I don't really know what benefit it would provide, I just want to for the hell of it. Might make for a more amusing time when I decide to use the caverns, idk. Can't be as bad as my plan to use a dragon as a flamethrower.

edit: Can giant sponges animate? I have a bad feeling about this.

second edit: Guess not, the sponge already has two kills.

third edit: Oh dear, it just won't stop killing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[jellsprout]

The main problem are sieges. If you dig a garbage chute from surface to magma or bring magma to the surface, small groups of undead are manageable with enough dwarfpower. But when you have almost 100 goblins corpses and bodyparts scattered across the surface, this becomes a lot more difficult to manage. Before a dwarf can drag a corpse to the garbage chute, a dozen corpses will rise up around him and scare him away. With a lot of time and effort it is possible to get rid of all the corpses, except by that time the next season will already be rolling around and a new siege will come to annoy you.

A second problem is that vampires become a lot more dangerous. Normally they will simply drain one single dwarf before you realize they exist and you can deal with him. Now that dwarf will become a zombie and wreak havoc deep within your fortress long before you realize what is happening.

Your best option is waiting for the next release. As it is now, there simply aren't any sufficient ways of dealing with large numbers of zombies other than locking yourself away.

[Spacespinner]

Oh god. I thought merchants being turned into zombies by vapors was the same as them dying but they just gave a "merchants are leaving the map" message and they're hauling their stuff away. Please tell me that the possibility of them killing my home civ hasn't been implemented yet. Because it would be really irritating if I survived only to kill off my important civ members without getting my king/queen at least.

I only know diplomat titles are transferred once they leave the map due to a bug, I actually have never thought of how merchants are handled. Are they just deleted upon leaving the map? I got a *diplomat left unhappy* message a while ago but since there was no combat, I don't know if he got thralled or anything. Any chance of him actually affecting the history?