Alright! I have a good feeling about this fortress.
It's hard to tell if that's well-placed. I've run into some really good, and really bad luck already.
First, the bad news:
It appears our embark site is over a Saltwater Aquifer, rather than a Freshwater Aquifer, despite the considerable distance to the nearest coast.
Now, the 7 Dwarves we started with (feel free to dorf yoursefl- but keep in mind I will NOT be separating dwarves by profession this early on. Thus, just because you chose Urist McLikes Shields, doesn't mean the dwarf will be getting an armorer or carpenter profession anytime soon...
Now, as for the embark goods:
Some of you may notice the following:
(1) I embarked with almost no booze! Don't panic- all of the plants I packed were brewable, and I intend to start underground farming plump helmets ASAP
(2) I embarked with no livestock. This might have been a mistake (especially since we had a Urist McLikesPigs in our First 7, and pigs would be the best livestock IMHO opinion due to the low availability of pasture- there's only a tiny bit of mountain grass clinging to some of the slopes that won't regrow after eaten) but I didn't want any pigs running off panicked into the nearest volcano the first time they see a polar bear from the top of the mountain, leading to instant bacon...
(3) I embarked with a LOT of stone. This was because the Embark screen listed Very Deep Soil, so I thought stone would be hard to get at besides the obsidian in the volcano rim. The ores (Tetrahedrite, Cassiterite, and Bismuthinite) are for making Bismuth Bronze- bar for bar the cheapest and most profitable weapons-grade material we can make using embark ores, given our lack of ability to embark with Copper Nuggets or Malachite. Turns out that the stone is QUITE accessible though, and we have
Native Copper available right near our Embark Wagon, so we probably would have been better off with some piggies...
Now, as for the Dwarven skills:
I didn't start with hardly any. 2 Novice Miners and a single Adequate Carpenter (to churn out some decent-quality beds from the start). Other than that, all our Embark points were invested in supplies.
Now, HERE is what our Embark site looked like the moment the game loaded up:
Looks like I was right about our starting on the peak of the volcano. Though not shown, the highest Z-level is also comprised of Clay- so we should have a VERY easy time mass-producing bricks using clay hauled down from there (or better yet, I'm thinking of piling it on a Hatch linked to a lever, and DROPPING it down a sort of elevator-shaft to the Z-level where we can locate our Magma Kilns). There's also Sand everywhere, and Clay on much lower Z-levels: though unfortunately it's all standard Clay, NONE of it is Fire Clay (so we won't be able to use it to hold our booze without investing our imported wood supply in glazing it...)
Also, I'm not stupid. I now Dwarves have a silly tendency to climb DOWN volcano rims. So one of my first acts as overseer was THIS:
That extends all the way from the z-level of the Wagon up to the volcano lip, and I expect NOBODY to remove that restricted area without VERY good reason. I do NOT want our Dwarves incinerating in Magma simply because they got a little frightened by some harmless bird diving into the side of the volcano, or caught sight of a Polar Bear over the walls, and decided to go volcano-diving as a result of the normal "treeing" logic (if pigs respected restricted areas as well as Dwarves, I would have brought some of them along on the Embark- but the bird suicidal dive-bombing bug is just as likely to kill them as not long before I manage to get them inside...)
This should be a FUN embark, though I intend to try and avoid having !FUN! this time around. I'll see you all soon with news of how my turn goes.
Regards,
Northstar