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[Magnumcannon]

It doesn't need to be too big, as this way you will have your dwarfs hauling stuff around while they should be working, but you don't want it to be too small because you want to have a good amount of logs to your carpenter work with. I think 5x5 stockpile should be fine. Make sure to disable your carpenter hauling, so he won't go hauling them and will focus on building all the stuff. By the way, what are the skills that you assigned to your dwarfs?

[Codyo]

the only thing you really need wood for is beds I think, anything else can be made with rocks or metalsmithing
also making charcoal is a pretty big deal (the labor for that is under farming)

making booze to keep your dwarves hydrated along with farming is important to start. So use that wood to make both beds and TONS of barrels. Or alternatively with stonecrafters, you can make rock pots from craftshops

the stockpile should be like 8x15 or something, as long as there is enough to store 100 logs. That's what I do at least in the case I'm ever besieged and blocked from the surface.
For now though, don't try to haul everything and make things tidy. Keep any stockpiles small since you will have a small population for the first two years and your dwarves will be very busy doing other things that are much more important.

and I don't like losing, losing is not fun watching your dwarves do whacky stuff and generally being insane is fun

[sumusiko]

oh my god I can't seem to be able to make a bedroom I'm wallbanging my face so hard

I looked it up and people say it's "Q" + "R" but that's not the keys for me, I'm using default I think where to move up and down in menu its "+" and "-"

[Magnumcannon]

It's actually lower case "q" on the bed and then "r" to build the bedroom. Yes, the "+" and the "-" are used sometimes to navigate through the menus, but sometimes, you use the letters to do it.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, the '+' and '-' comes into the equation after 'r' to determine the size of the bedroom (expanding/contracting the square). Also note that for rooms you cannot control the placement or shape of the "room": it's always a square centered on the furniture (bed/table/chair). However, walls block room designations, so even if you want your bed along the wall, you can still get the room to only include that e.g. 3*3 room, without taking over the neighboring one.

[Badger Storm]

1. There's no win condition - it's literally impossible to offically "win".  You decide what you want to do and then go try to do it.  Do you want to make a ziggurat entirely out of soap?  Go for it.

2.The game is pretty hard to pick up at first, so you might want to read up.  The use of +/- to scroll up and down really threw me off at first, but now it's second nature.

3.Adventure mode confused me and didn't really appeal to me, but that doesn't mean you won't like it.  Fortress mode is by far more popular and the one more talked about.

4.Medium is probably a bit easier, as it means goblins have to travel further and gives you more time before they seige you, but you might run into FPS problems within a few years.  I've always genned medium worlds, and just started with my first small one.

Others:

 - Really, it's your choice.  I always, always dig into the mountainside, but I play with invasions off like a pussy.  I imagine that if you go straight into the ground you'll have an easier time surrounding the fortress with a moat.
 - If you pick an embark with mountains, you'll want the other part to have soil and trees on it, since mountains don't really have either.  Even if it's a grassland it should have at least enough wood to hold you over until you can request more from the caravan.
 - Wood has tons of uses.  Not only is it useful for making beds and barrels, but it makes charcoal, a fuel, and ash for your glass and ceramic industries.  Do be warned: if you offer anything made from wood to elves, they'll get pissy and leave in a huff.  To keep wood from flooding my fort, I cut down trees only as I need them.
 - If you're a beginner, you'll want to embark somewhere with a Warm climate and preferably a river.  Temperate and colder climates freeze over during part of the year, Hot climates have some water dry up, and I've heard that the rain in Scorching climates will literally burn your dwarves.
 - Stay away from aquifers at first.  There are ways to deal with them, but for now they'll just be a headache.  Likewise with evil biomes, unless you like bloody rain, undead elephants, and clouds that turn things into nearly-unstoppable super zombies
 - Have fun, and I'm not necessarily referring to the kind that's a euphemism for a fort falling into chaos.

[sumusiko]

It's actually lower case "q" on the bed and then "r" to build the bedroom. Yes, the "+" and the "-" are used sometimes to navigate through the menus, but sometimes, you use the letters to do it.

No i mean when I press q and then r on the bed I don't get the build bedroom thing it gets me to something else completely different. What I noticed is that people who say it's "q" +"r" use alt+something to move in the menu while I use "-" and "+" so maybe they have other keybindings, anyone knows what keyset that is so I can use it?

[bluephoenix]

It's actually lower case "q" on the bed and then "r" to build the bedroom. Yes, the "+" and the "-" are used sometimes to navigate through the menus, but sometimes, you use the letters to do it.

No i mean when I press q and then r on the bed I don't get the build bedroom thing it gets me to something else completely different. What I noticed is that people who say it's "q" +"r" use alt+something to move in the menu while I use "-" and "+" so maybe they have other keybindings, anyone knows what keyset that is so I can use it?

Those are the standard keys. I haven never heard of "alt+something" as a keybinding so ignore that I guess.
"q" gives you a little courser (A flashing "x") that you have to put on top of the bed. Once it is on the bed, the menu on the right should have some options like "r - create bedroom"
You then press "r" while still in the "q"menu and press the "+" to increase the size of the bedroom and then press enter. Pretty easy actually. And then you can assign the bed to a dwarf by using the "q" menu again.

EDIT: Also you placed the bed using the "b"uild menu right? You can only designate a bedroom once the bed has already been placed.

If you still don't get it, I can make a picture tutorial for you or something tomorrow.

[sumusiko]

My bad I was doing something wrong, got it to work.

One more thing, how do I make the dwarfs clean the exterior? I built underground directly in the middle of a forest and not nside a mountain and theres load of trash outside but they apparently only like cleaning inside however I wanna make a fortress outside too..

[bluephoenix]

In the "o"rders menu you have to allow dwarves to "collect refuse from outside".

[sumusiko]

also any tips on trading? What things should I trade and what things should I look for?


Also anything I should craft to sell to them?



Also can I make stone walls and smooth these or I can only smooth natural walls?

[Ancalagon_TB]

trading, you want to get what you don't have, or what you have a hard time making.  I'll give you an example that's pretty relevant for me, what's going on in my fort.  Replace "iron" with whatever you are lacking.

So, I don't have iron.  From the dwarves, I get iron bars... but also pig iron bars, steel bars, iron ore (hematite, magnetite, limonite) and iron items - I usually order iron anvils - and melt those.

From the elves I buy fruits (to make more varied booze) and various articles of clothing.  I also buy "cool" animals to help defend the fortress.  I now have a war grizzly *and* a war jaguar parked at the entrance of my fort.  Good luck getting by those kobold thief!   I also buy things they have I don't like getting bothered to make, like clothing items and barrels. 

So buy what you need and can't get, or don't feel like making.

What to sell?  Crafts is a great one.  You can use crafts to get rid of stuff you don't want (low value metals, horn/hoof, skulls (make totems) and bones) or just to create value.  If you have access to silver or gold and have a decent craftman, making ridiculous amount of value is very easy. 

If you don't have silver and gold, you can try making craft items out of iron (if you have it) or brass,  you will get decent value out of that. 

Another one is trap components - giant spiked balls are worth a ridiculous amount of money.

Cut gems are a good item to sell at the start as they take little effort to make.

Lavish meals (roasts) can be worth a lot of money, but you only want to sell those when your food supply is well established.

[Codyo]

When trade caravans do come, make sure you assigned  ''n'' a broker. Then have a Trade Depot ready from the ''b'' menu.
Make sure you have a dwarf with the Architecture(building designer skill) labor enabled. Some special buildings need it. Architecture is under the Other\Misc\Cleaning labors or whatever it's called.

With a trade depot built and a caravan visiting your fortress, you hit ''q'' then go to the Depot and hit ''r'' I think that one tells the broker to go to the depot. Once he's there, you'll be allowed to trade.
And you have to hit ''g'' to tell your dwarves to specify items to the depot to trade.

[sumusiko]

Also about professions what do you prefer?

Is this decent?
1 has all the crafting professions or half of them / 2 have all the crafting professions
2-3 Farmers
1 Woodcutter
1 Miner
1 Masonry/stone detailing
and all that.


Basically have 1 citizen focusing on 1-3 things and then all the others are either soldiers or doing hauling

[smeeprocket]

eventually you are going to want to have dwarves that specialize in the basic jobs like carpentry and masonry, and definitely weaponsmithing and armorsmithing (I always make the metalcrafting stuff the same guy unless someone who is really good at armor migrates while my current guy is really good at weapons, then I let them specialize and set up two forges.)

This means turning off all the other labors for that dwarf and turning off hauling and such. You want them pumping out the related items until they become very good at it, that way they gain lots of skill instead of all your dwarves getting small amounts of skill.

Early on, I will definitely set a few dwarves to have all labors but fishing and hunting and plant gathering (or they will do those things constantly.)

You'll want one dwarf as a hunter or fisher to keep food coming in, and using "i" you'll want to set a zone around some trees you aren't going to cut down and then use "g" once you have defined the area to set it for gathering fruit. This will help you have stuff to brew drinks with, and dwarves get unhappy with just water.

If you want to make it a little easier, though many people consider this an exploit, you can make trap components of whatever type you want to sell to the caravans or sell them prepared meals. The value of these items are pretty high. But if you want to go for more legit stuff, metal crafts go for a decent amount. You can just pump out stone and bone and such crafts endlessly, but they aren't worth a huge amount. It doesn't hurt to get one dwarf good at making all that stuff though. The more skilled your dwarf in a given skill, the higher quality items they'll make and the more money you can bring in for the items.