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[Thormgrim]

Are there any tangible benefits to embarking in an evil location, aside from the !FUN! of it?

Is there more candy at the bottom?  More gemstones in the soil?

Are there any positive reasons to embark on a terrifying mountain or in a haunted forest (not just the challenge)?

[Sutremaine]

If you have a resurrecting biome you can secure live targets for your marksdwarves to train on, though you can get the same functionality by embarking near a tower or containing an FB that can't be killed by bolts.

Evil biomes may also contain glumprongs, which are a shade of purple shared only by rutile and pitchblende, and sliver barbs. Sliver barbs produce low-value alcohol (though it does have a cool name), and black dye that's as valuable as the dye from blade weed and dimple cups.

[PDF urist master]

this is the only place where you can find sliver barb, which is used to make black dye, and glumprong, a dense wood excellent for ballista bolts.

so basically just for the challenge

EDIT:
darn it Sutremaine you beat me to it.

[ImagoDeo]

Yes and no.

If you embark to a location with deadly gas clouds, they form a very very very effective defense against all thieves, ambushes, and sieges, so long as you're willing to stay almost completely underground and either a) let caravans die or b) exploit map edge properties to restrict caravan entry points. On my longest running fort, I've been totally safe from goblin sieges for the last twenty-five years.

On the flipside, you can't be guaranteed any particular feature until you've been to the area once. You could get syndrome rain, thralling clouds, or a reanimating biome, any of which exist only to screw you over and mercilessly slaughter your dwarves, driving you underground and restricting all of your activities to a very small secure portion of the map and likely preventing any immigrants.

I got lucky with Valefortress. And I used exploits.

[gtaguy]

Zombies just don't give a %#+*, they attack anything. So bring everything you will ever need on-site and wall off the fort entrance. You are safe from all sieges and such. Ever now and then all the hair and skin needs to be cleansed from the outside with some magma, otherwise a slow and painful FPS death awaits.

[ImagoDeo]

Zombies just don't give a %#+*, they attack anything. So bring everything you will ever need on-site and wall off the fort entrance. You are safe from all sieges and such. Ever now and then all the hair and skin needs to be cleansed from the outside with some magma, otherwise a slow and painful FPS death awaits.

Magma doesn't kill the undead. Some of their tissues just never melt. :/

[gtaguy]

Zombies just don't give a %#+*, they attack anything. So bring everything you will ever need on-site and wall off the fort entrance. You are safe from all sieges and such. Ever now and then all the hair and skin needs to be cleansed from the outside with some magma, otherwise a slow and painful FPS death awaits.

Magma doesn't kill the undead. Some of their tissues just never melt. :/

Well, bone bolt barrage. The BBB is a powerful archer training tool and it also clears up stray living hairs.

[Sutremaine]

Thinking about it, what you want is not an evil biome on your embark screen, but an embark that borders on an evil biome on as few tiles as possible. That way, you get a tiny little patch of evil ground, and perhaps even small enough to seal off. I'm a little fuzzy on how to block fliers above ground (the horror... the horror... the undead giant bird flocks...), but ground-based entry can be dealt with first by a wall and a couple of raising bridges, and then by a lot of raising bridges.