Yeah, dyeing is ridiculously profitable. Once, in a fortress in an evil biome with sliver dye, a special plant only found there, I sold a couple dyed shirts[9/10s of the fort had died to zombie apocalypse, so that was all I had] for everything I wanted[Metal, wood, food, weapons, clothes, leather, cloth]. Dyeing is awesome. I find cheesemaking annoying because buckets, but it IS really valuable. Soap can save the lives of your militia by fighting infections and beekeeping is infinite crafts and gives you brewable honey[Which is useful if you don't have clay and magma or a stable farming industry.].
Personally, what I do, is draft lots of useless dwarves into the military. But that requires certain personality traits now, IIRC, so that might not be a good idea any more. Engraving is always good, since I like having my entire fortress smooth. But that also means you get far less Legendary Engravers because the skill gain is diluted amongst multiple dwarves, so you'd need to use burrows if you wanted only your best Engraver to engrave a noble's room or something. Same with Miners. If you designate a one tile wide hallway, odds are its going to be one of the slow, fat, unskilled migrants you gave a pick instead of your lighting fast Legendary Miner you embarked with. With judicious use of workshop profiles, you could totally just draft useless migrants to building walls, setting up levers and hauling while your skilled Masons and Mechanics make blocks and mechanisms.
Something fun **I** once did was send an entire migrant wave to go smooth the caverns. My OCD demanded it. I complied. By the end of a year, most of the caverns were smooth. They also doubled as painters. The caverns are made up of so many different colours, its sort of annoyingly chaotic. Once they were done, it was a nice uniform red.
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Topic: What to do with migrants? (Read 3151 times)