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[Spacefaye]

So now I'm familiar with the game mechanics, what are some things I have to do at the very beginning of the game?

[Dampe]

Strike the earth!

[HooliganintheFort]

Strike the earth!

[sal880612m]

So you mean things like set up a farm to produce food and dig out bedrooms, down trees, craft beds and barrels/pots ... or something else?

[Spacefaye]

So you mean things like set up a farm to produce food and dig out bedrooms, down trees, craft beds and barrels/pots ... or something else?

Yeah... Things to help get me started.

[blue emu]

Something to eat - a farm, or collect berries, or slaughter your draft animals... or all three.
Something to drink - booze... is there a truly Dwarven alternative? Later on, a well to provide water for wounded Dwarves.
Somewhere to sleep - in the dirt at first, then either a communal dormatory or (better) individual bedrooms.
Somewhere safe to stash your stuff - underground stockpiles.
Something to keep the riff-raff out - a lever-controlled drawbridge to seal your entry tunnel, doors, walls, traps, etc.
Somewhere to work - underground workshops with local stockpiles.

Then start digging down to find the Magma. Everything goes better with Magma.

[sal880612m]

Besides those you should create some tables and chairs, perhaps a dining area for your dwarves. Maybe draft two dwarves into the military and set up a barrack to start training them. If you have no plants set some dwarves to have the gather plants labor enabled and designate some plants to be gathered. Once you have plants and barrels/pots set up a still and start brewing some alcohol. Make some goods either stone or wood depending on what is immediately more plentiful for trade, build a trade depot. Pasture your animals in areas large enough for them to graze in (see wiki for those values), set up bedrooms. Plant your fields. If you don't know how to do some of that and for other ideas http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Tutorials

[blue emu]

The best trade goods at the start of the game are prepared meals. They can be worth 3000 dwarf-bucks per stack, are quick to make and easy to store and carry, and you can set the stockpile to accept ONLY prepared meals (while all other food stockpiles are set to forbid them) and to reject barrels so that the meals sit in individual stacks.

Almost anything can be used to make them... eggs, booze, berries gathered in the woods, slaughtered draft animals, dead rats, shot-down keas... whatever.

[PDF urist master]

I usually try to build a wall around my fort to ensure some safety from dangerous creatures.

In evil biomes, one of the first things I do is get my dwarves underground and then seal the entrance.

[deepfreeze78]

Besides those you should create some tables and chairs, perhaps a dining area for your dwarves. Maybe draft two dwarves into the military and set up a barrack to start training them. If you have no plants set some dwarves to have the gather plants labor enabled and designate some plants to be gathered. Once you have plants and barrels/pots set up a still and start brewing some alcohol. Make some goods either stone or wood depending on what is immediately more plentiful for trade, build a trade depot. Pasture your animals in areas large enough for them to graze in (see wiki for those values), set up bedrooms. Plant your fields. If you don't know how to do some of that and for other ideas http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Tutorials

I usually wait quite a while until I begin drafting for the military. I've never actually had anyone in a squad that I actually use until the migrant wave right after the first caravan, and at that point I just make a full squad.

The best trade goods at the start of the game are prepared meals. They can be worth 3000 dwarf-bucks per stack, are quick to make and easy to store and carry, and you can set the stockpile to accept ONLY prepared meals (while all other food stockpiles are set to forbid them) and to reject barrels so that the meals sit in individual stacks.

Almost anything can be used to make them... booze, berries gathered in the woods, slaughtered draft animals, dead rats, shot-down keas... whatever.

I typically go with stone/bone crafts to sell, as these can be stored in bins instead of barrels, which are necessary for booze, and are also completely useless unless traded, so I don't have to worry about not having enough to survive. There's also a near infinite amount of stone on each map, so it helps clean up.

[sal880612m]

The best trade goods at the start of the game are prepared meals. They can be worth 3000 dwarf-bucks per stack, are quick to make and easy to store and carry, and you can set the stockpile to accept ONLY prepared meals (while all other food stockpiles are set to forbid them) and to reject barrels so that the meals sit in individual stacks.

Almost anything can be used to make them... eggs, booze, berries gathered in the woods, slaughtered draft animals, dead rats, shot-down keas... whatever.

Downsides include being edible and requiring food/drink ingredients a new player may not be able to spare or want to part with. I know there are tons of more effective options but I like not being able to buy out the entire caravan so I primarily use crafts as my trade goods.

[blue emu]

Barrels are not necessary for booze.

Rock pots are superior for that purpose, since in the early game you will have lots of stone lying around loose, and you don't need to go outside to get it.

[deepfreeze78]

Barrels are not necessary for booze.

Rock pots are superior for that purpose, since in the early game you will have lots of stone lying around loose, and you don't need to go outside to get it.

You are right, I forgot about that.

[condonzack]

The first thing I do is hit p, i, and b-w and remind myself of all the stockpiles, zones, and workshops. A good fort will have almost all of them.

[greycat]

Enable refuse gathering/dumping (o r o) and disable web collection (o W w if I recall correctly).

Nominate a broker (typically the one dwarf you assigned a point of Appraiser to).  Nominate a chief medic if you gave someone medical skills.  Nominate a bookkeeper and a manager (often the same dwarf) and give them a 3x3 office with a door, a table, and a chair once you've dug far enough down to make offices.  Set the bookkeeper to medium, which takes like half a second to achieve.  (Highest bookkeeping takes forever.)

Make wheelbarrows.  Dig a 5x5 room in stone for the first mason's shop.  In the center 3x3 build the mason's shop out of one of the stones.  While that's in progress, designate the outer ring of the 5x5 room as a stone stockpile, assign two wheelbarrows, and disable all stone types until the wheelbarrows get there.  Once the wheelbarrows are there, allow the stockpile to accept one type of stone (whatever is the most common at the moment, or whichever layer stone the shop is built in).  The dwarves will fill up the stockpile with stones using the wheelbarrows.  Have the stockpile give to the mason's shop.  Once the mason's shop is built, have it build stone blocks (just once or twice).  Once that's done, tear down the mason's shop, rebuild it using a stone block instead of a boulder, and re-assign the stockpile to give to the new mason's shop.

Make more wheelbarrows.  Always have extras, because you'll want a couple for every stone stockpile, of which you'll probably have several.