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[Draba]

I've just started playing Dwarf Fortress a few days ago, great game all around.

Covered the very first basics, managed to get some minimalist forts up and running. Still, got two areas where I could use some insight from experienced players:

• I tend to get lost in job assignment, even with just ~30 population. My embarks are based on disciplined craftlords, tweaked a bit every time I learn something new. Each starter dwarf has 2-3 skills I've found useful, plus maybe an extra point in mining or the like. I usually assign very strict labor orders (the mastered skills + hauling + the default healing/other categories). Shifting them around with migrants and urgent jobs I get lost pretty fast, half the dwarves dick around the meeting hall while the workshops are empty.
  
  What's the best approach to getting the everyday things (cooking, farming, basic crafting and the like) mostly automated?
  Some esoteric manager rules, maybe therapist (if you use therapist, how good are the automatic assignment options)?
  
  
  
• Just got to the point where I'm checking out what nobles do. Generally how useful are they?
  At first glance I'd guess at the start manager is very important, bookkeper is nice to have.
  

Some bonus questions:
- how important are attributes?
- what are the significant population levels? I remember reading somewhere 80 being the limit after which some events can occur, are there any others?
- is there any real difference between an iron and steel anvil? A post from around 2010-2011 said there isn't, but that was a long time ago and the craftlords embark contains
a steel anvil. One of the tweaks I've made to it is the switch to iron, but it bugs me not to know why was it there.

[Naryar]

Use dwarf therapist, indeed. It makes job and dwarf management much easier.

Nobles are mostly useless, but they do work for you. Manager, Broker, bookkeeper and chief medical dwarf are the only real useful nobles. The others are merely pointless positions that don't really achieve anything.

Well, there's the king who brings legendary craftsdwarves with him when he comes, but that's when you have 100 or more dwarves in your fort.

A steel anvil is just as useful as an iron anvil.

[utunnels]

how important are attributes?

I don't check them. Maybe they are important for military persons -- it'll take time to train a weak dwarf to be decent soldier.
But for other jobs, I'll go with their default settings. Even a fool can became a legendary crafter if you give them enough time. Usually there are more than enough jobs for them to do.

[Garath]

for reasons, some dwarven civs dont have access to iron, but they will always have steel. So if that happens you'll still have an anvil. Otherwise there is no benefit to having it from one material or another

nobles, well, dont really call your manager, CMD, broker or some such a noble since you can appoint whoever you want for that position and they actually work. Currently there isn't really any use to barons dukes and such though

[Deboche]

I don't think there's a feature in Therapist to automate things but the game is very hard to play without it. You'll get the hang of it in time. When my population reaches a certain point - about 60 - I have women do all the work and put all the men in the army. Women are best left working because you don't want them to go into battle with their babies.

And I usually have 1 woman per job except for specific jobs that require more people such as mining if you're mining a lot or masonry if you're building something. And some women get two or more jobs if it makes sense like Milking and Cheese Making, Shearing and Spinning, every smith I make a furnace operator as well.

Nobles are a way to break the boredom of an established civ for me. You can start beautifying the fortress and make lavish rooms for them. Many players come up with elaborate ways to kill them.

[Draba]

Thanks for the help, after fidgeting around a bit therapist is all I need indeed. Just got to have a comfortable overlap in most professions so a dwarf is always available.

Also, I'll stop worrying about attributes for now. More time to come up with convoluted and awesome murder plans for the eventual noble infestation

[Thisfox]

I've never bothered with therapist, and I rarely use the Manager, but I still have all my dwarfs busy: I just do a sweep of the different workshops every quarter, and check they're all full up on the tasks I want them to do. I'm told that this would not be a workable method if I used burrows, but I never figured those out either, and my dwarfs are free range most of the time. Doesn't seem to hurt. I check the {j} list regularly to find out what jobs have been cancelled for whatever the reason is this time.

If you want a particular dwarf on a particular job, you can give 'em their very own workshop with no one else allowed to use it, then fill that workshop with the job orders you're after. If you want to be totalitarian about it, you can lock that dorf into the room the workshop is in with a door, and not let him out till he's done.

If a dwarf arrives with particular useful skills, I leave them on him. If not, I usually stick him in the military, or give him a few jobs that don't require much skill - chopping wood and smoothing walls. Almost all of my useless dwarfs become engravers. I'm told someone out there does the same thing with pumping: If they have a "useless" dwarf, he is made to pump and thus builds muscles and is useful if pumping ever needs to be done.

If there are a lot of idling dwarfs, there can be another reason: You could have dwarfs who do not value hard work, or give up at the slightest difficulty, or somat similar. If that's the case, they might want to go to down below magma pumping duty, or be given the front row with the military, those guys with the cheap armour and the not very good weapons. Check their interests, and either protect 'em or give 'em something to fight for.

[PatrikLundell]

I've never used automatic job assignment, but use DT quite a lot for job selection. I tend to assign jobs based on which jobs I need done, aptitude, and preferences. So when a new immigration wave arrives, I use DT to look at them in the Roles and Military views, try to find any who are skilled in tasks I need, and also somewhat what they're interested in (log hauling would match up with acceptance of the outdoors, for instance).
I generally have a rather small milita force (using traps and devices mostly, and consider it a failure when the militia actually has to do anything), but assign only males and non reproductive females (i.e. asexual and homosexual) for the military on the purely practical grounds that I don't want to either lose babies nor suffer tantrum spirals, and I think fighting is impaired by carrying a baby as well [some people on the forum have very strong ideological views on this: I just adapt to what the current game rules are].

[Mushroo]

What's the best approach to getting the everyday things (cooking, farming, basic crafting and the like) mostly automated?

Easy! Don't do this:

Each starter dwarf has 2-3 skills I've found useful, plus maybe an extra point in mining or the like. I usually assign very strict labor orders (the mastered skills + hauling + the default healing/other categories). Shifting them around with migrants and urgent jobs I get lost pretty fast, half the dwarves dick around the meeting hall while the workshops are empty.

If you choose "Play Now" and then just start playing, then you will get a fisherdwarf, brewer, etc. and all your basic fortress survival needs will be met until the first caravan.

ps Having lots of idlers getting drunk in your meeting hall isn't "losing" in my opinion, it is "winning."

[bigcalm]

> What's the best approach to getting the everyday things (cooking, farming, basic crafting and the like) mostly automated?

Therapist is the thing you need.   It very much depends on where you are in the game as to what you want doing - when you have 7 dwarves they're likely to have a few labours enabled - but when you have 70 dwarves, you probably want to be very specific.  Every time you have new migrants you probably want to assign / deassign labours - a beekeeper is not going to be as much help as say, a farmer early on.  The way I personally manage lots of dwarves is to give them all nicknames ("Miller Asen", "Weaver Urist") when I assign them a profession.  I can then see any dwarves that haven't been allocated a profession by just looking in therapist in the "has nickname" dropdown.  As a general rule of thumb, you should need about 1 farmer for every 15 dwarves.  I normally have quite a long re-organising session spring/summer of the second year and then has minor tweaks to it occasionally.  Note that having nicknames is very helpful when they die as well - if "Miner Id" dies, he'll disappear from therapist - but I know his profession from his nickname, so it's a short matter of going into therapist and assigning another dwarf to do mining.

If you have idlers, press 'u' to see who's idle.  Then go across to therapist and see what labours that dwarf has assigned.  Then consider what jobs you need doing (a side note:  Some professions (woodcutter, miner, hunter) need tools and without them they can't do the job). 

> Just got to the point where I'm checking out what nobles do. Generally how useful are they?

You do need nobles - and the ones you appoint are useful and/or necessary (manager, broker, bookkeeper, chief medical dwarf).  The ones that people moan about in the forums are the mayor, the baron/count/duke and the monarch.  These nobles are lazy, make constant demands and require fine accomodation.  You don't really need any of these nobles - hence various noble disposal methods around here.  See how you fare - when the 17th request comes in to make ballista arrows you might snap and send them to try and collect webs whilst a giant cave spider is around.  When the outpost liason arrives and asks you to nominate someone to be baron spend a bit of time finding a dwarf who ideally: likes stuff that you're going to make a lot of anyway (e.g. bolts) ; has had a mood (i.e. can't go insane) ;

> - how important are attributes?

With the right attributes a dwarf will level up faster.  Meh, they'll get there eventually.  The only place I look at attributes when deciding is for professions that take forever to level up (architect I'm looking at you!)

> what are the significant population levels? I remember reading somewhere 80 being the limit after which some events can occur, are there any others?
You need 140 population for the monarch to arrive
You need 50 for semi-megabeast attacks (minotaurs, etc.)
I think werebeasts can attack regardless of population.

> is there any real difference between an iron and steel anvil? A post from around 2010-2011 said there isn't, but that was a long time ago and the craftlords embark contains a steel anvil

I really don't think there's a difference.  The speed that your smith will work should depend on his/her skill and not the materials that make up the forge.  However, on a slightly different note, if you can make your workshops out of stuff that has a certain quality level, dwarves can get a happy thought from it (e.g. making a dyer's shop with an artifact barrel).

[Thisfox]

One of the things I love about this game is that there is so much variation in different gameplay, and even the definitions of "success" and "failure" in the game.

...has had a mood (i.e. can't go insane) ... {snip}

Interesting criterion, that one. How is this important?
I mean, if they go mad because they can't get materials for their artifact, is the situation any better or worse if they are noble or not? I wouldn't have thought it would have any effect, mayor or no.

[bigcalm]

One of the things I love about this game is that there is so much variation in different gameplay, and even the definitions of "success" and "failure" in the game.

...has had a mood (i.e. can't go insane) ... {snip}

Interesting criterion, that one. How is this important?
I mean, if they go mad because they can't get materials for their artifact, is the situation any better or worse if they are noble or not? I wouldn't have thought it would have any effect, mayor or no.

If the dwarf has already created an artifact in the past, they can never go insane from just being miserable (though with the change to stress recently this advice might be wrong now!).  I like to keep my nobles alive - I like the challenge!  When, inevitably, the countess decides to have a tantrum because not enough toy boats have been made, she can be quarantined until she calms down - she can throw as many tantrums as she likes whilst she's walled into her rooms where she can't hurt anyone else.

[Draba]

I've been locking some lazy bastards in their workshops anyway, my rule is absolute until I settle in a better way
The nickname system is brilliant in its simplicity, that one I'll definitely use.

[Larix]

One of the things I love about this game is that there is so much variation in different gameplay, and even the definitions of "success" and "failure" in the game.

...has had a mood (i.e. can't go insane) ... {snip}

Interesting criterion, that one. How is this important?
I mean, if they go mad because they can't get materials for their artifact, is the situation any better or worse if they are noble or not? I wouldn't have thought it would have any effect, mayor or no.

If the dwarf has already created an artifact in the past, they can never go insane from just being miserable (though with the change to stress recently this advice might be wrong now!).

The effects of severe stress are so nasty that i wouldn't consider insanity immunity much of a benefit. You'll really want to keep your nobles un-stressed entirely. For that purpose, convenient item preferences help fulfilling mandates on time, and a natural aptitude to handle stress should lower the impact if mandates fail.

Nobles never tantrummed just because a single mandate didn't work out. Giving them no or absurdly inadequate rooms is much more effective.

PS:
1.Dwarf job management:

Note that having nicknames is very helpful when they die as well - if "Miner Id" dies, he'll disappear from therapist - but I know his profession from his nickname,

I'm confused. When my dwarfs happen to die, the death notice (and entry in the dead units list) directly mentions their profession anyway. If a designated miner shows up as "farmer" or "peasant" upon death, they can't have mined much.

2.continued annoying mandates:
just don't jump to mandate fulfillment instantly. A noble will normally try to have as many mandates going as they are entitled to (up to three for a duchess). They can _not_ have two identical mandates like "make bolts", i.e. a new "make bolts" mandate has to wait until an active one has been met. And a production mandate has a runtime of several months, typically something between four and six. So if you want to make fewer traction benches for your baron, drag your feet and only fulfill the order once the indicator colour changes to yellow - the longer you take to finish the job, the fewer mandates per year you have to meet (and the faster you finish your mandate, the sooner the next one will come up). You have to train yourself into very frequently checking the nobles screen to make this work, because you'll still want to actually fulfill the mandates...