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[Goblins]

Hello!  I just started playing Dwarf Fortress again after taking a long break from it.  I'm surprised that my username wasn't taken already... maybe it was meant to be?  Anyways, I really love playing dwarf fortress!

Previously I was a bit of a mess; not really doing anything productive and in the end dying due to silly mistakes.  Let me give you some examples.  First off, I didn't know how to brew alcohol or anything... so my dwarfs got way too sober to do any work at all.  Then if I remember correctly a quick siege ended my noobish fortress, leaving nothing behind.  Back then I didn't have any tilesets or anything so it was confusing.

Now that I regained interest and am reading the wiki more, I have found so much more out!  I now use one of the tilesets and believe me, it makes the game way more understandable to me!  I think I have finally got past the learning curve of the game.   I would also like to point out that I do have Dwarf Therapist and the LazyNewbPack.  Though I am here on the forums to ask questions because my knowledge is very limited as of now. 

So, some questions of mine currently are;

1. When is it safest to go and look for caves? 

2. Is relocation of a base a good idea once I get good?

3. Are rangers/fishers useful in any way to have them in great numbers or should I recruit them to the military?


I have no doubt that more questions will follow after this!  Thanks for your time!

[C27]

A vile force of darkness has arrived!

Hi there.

1. The caves are safe to breach any time that you have the ability to seal them off - either through a constructed wall/floor or other reliable means. Exploring the caverns by dwarven boots on the ground should wait until you have some dwarves in a squad with metal arms and armor, even copper will help immensely.
2. There's nothing wrong with leaving a fort if you want to try doing things differently, or if you embarked as an experiment to see how some idea worked in practice, or if you just got bored. I suppose it's more "honorable" to retire the fort than to abandon.
3. Rangers can provide a decent amount of food while learning skills that they'll use as marksdwarves, so letting them hunt while you feel confident about not needing them for defense is fine. Fisherdwarves can supply quite a bit of food (often more than you can handle!), though building a roofed structure around and over the best fishing hole, accessible only from inside the fort, will keep them safe.

[Goblins]

A vile force of darkness has arrived!

Hi there.

1. The caves are safe to breach any time that you have the ability to seal them off - either through a constructed wall/floor or other reliable means. Exploring the caverns by dwarven boots on the ground should wait until you have some dwarves in a squad with metal arms and armor, even copper will help immensely.
2. There's nothing wrong with leaving a fort if you want to try doing things differently, or if you embarked as an experiment to see how some idea worked in practice, or if you just got bored. I suppose it's more "honorable" to retire the fort than to abandon.
3. Rangers can provide a decent amount of food while learning skills that they'll use as marksdwarves, so letting them hunt while you feel confident about not needing them for defense is fine. Fisherdwarves can supply quite a bit of food (often more than you can handle!), though building a roofed structure around and over the best fishing hole, accessible only from inside the fort, will keep them safe.

Okay!  I did hear about cave moss... any ill effects?

And what I mean by relocation is moving down my current field with the same dwarfs and building another base next to my old one.  This means keeping my old base and world, no abandoning the fortress.

[C27]

Cave moss is useful, because it's fodder for grazing animals. If you dig out a large dirt area underground or secure a cavern section, it'll make for good pastureland for livestock.

Do you mean moving the structure of the fort itself into a new location on the fort-mode map - same embark area, same citizens? If you have a plan, go for it. It's common for people to build an early fort close to the surface and then move everything deep down once they find magma,but moving laterally or up into the sky is valid too!

[Thisfox]

The caverns can occasionally have monsters in them which do have ill effects, such as forgotten beasts. The surface can have monsters which have ill effects as well, such as a colossus or similar. Either way, fortifications are important, such as walls, traps, and doors/hatches, but there is a lot of good in both these places: Food on the ground and in the trees, wood, pasture for your animals, and soil for your gardens. Some people move their operations into the caverns permanently, so as to avoid the dangers of the surface, others (myself included) tend to stay in layers very close to the surface, directly under the aquifer, because the caverns are big and scary, so it really does depend on your goals and interests.

I often "retire" a fort and colonise somewhere else, depending on what I'm trying to do and whether I've completed my first goal.

[origamiscienceguy]

Also, if you manage to trap a giant spider in a room with fortifications, you can walk a "volunteer" in front of it. This gives you infinite web, infinite silk, infinite clothes. If you can manage it.