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[Loud Whispers]

I had a large militia, a small army of dogs, was constructing a massive underground prison and a Colosseum above ground. On one side of the river I was constructing a new workshop-Fortress central, on the other side was an endless plague of giant badgers. The badgers hunted the Dwarves, but rarely had great successes, only managing to pick off a soldier here and there. Things were going well, with the Dwarves even managing to capture some giant badgers for the Colosseum. I recall it was one particularly foolish Dwarf called Dumat, who managed to release all of them to rather violent results. A goblin ambush at the same time arrived. Up until that point I had had little interactions with the outside civilizations, and my Dwarves were equipped and armoured only in the bones of their giant badger foes or obsidian swords. The goblins arrived with metal pikes and metal armour, it was like the conquistadors attacking Tenochitlan. The Dwarves were massacred, the dogs massacred, not a single goblin was killed. The survivors desperately tried to plug in all the gaps in the Fort's defences before the goblins made it deeper, but to no avail, they were killed. Things took a turn for the absolute worst when the river froze over (in a desert!), and the giant badgers were given total access to my Fort. Eventually all I had left was one miner Dwarf, sealed in the food and booze stockpile with a pickaxe, trying to survive all on his own. His attempt to dig through and secure the workshops ended when a the goblin pikemen found him.

[Inarius]

It was just before or after v40.

It was my first fortress, and I followed every step of a (french) blog about how to build a fortress.

It worked very well actually.

Until...well....a WELL.

I wanted to build a well, but it wasn't written on this blog.
So I tried to do it myself, I dug a hole close to the river, and down to a chamber 5 level below. I put the well one just above this chamber, in the middle of my hall.
The bedrooms and workplace was 2 level below this hall.

Everybody drawned very fast, only a fisher and a farmer survived

[jaw2233]

dwarves are jerks. My first fortress died of starvation because 3 immigrant waves had 1 parent each and the rest was CHILDREN! they devoured our food and everyone died!

[NJW2000]

My last and first fort was prospering, having killed 1 FB, a feathered wasp, and 1 werebull, with minimal casulaties (~15).

We were protected by one of the first strange moods to happen in my fort: an artifact hatch cover, with many precious gems and decorations. This was at the bottom of my central staircase, ending in the cavern layer, bolted shut and forbidden, while stairs extended to to the first caverns, surrounded by traps.
  After a while, a fearsome towering bloated fire-breathing ape with external ribs and antennae showed up, possibly as a god called by the grey langur captive, who was being kept and taunted untrained for the sins of his fellows: stealing lots and causing one death through frienly fire punches and infected face.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  I let the cavern creatures, of which there were many, attack the ape. Though my death count went from 50 to 150 in a metter of months, and the entire underground was turned to flame, ash, blood, corpses and miasma, the FB was injured, and impaired.

  It finally beat the cavern creatures down, and was left alone in the depths. Then I realised, at the begginning of a strange mood, in a tanner's workshop in some out-of-the way part of the fortress, that mokeys can open doors. Storming past the meagre traps, the ape came up and killed 1/4 of our population. A militia was sent in, brave yet underequipped soldiers, great in training but low in iron kit, and died to flames. The central hallway filled with somke, and my dwarves collected in the panic room. Somehow, the FB got past the drawbridge, and everyone attacking him did nothing. At long last, once the death, slaughter, and uncomfortable leather-trouser whipping was over, the FB went down to the grave layer, and my dwarf finished the artifact: a boar leather hood decorated with black zircons.

  The save still lies, Tunecem, on a different computer to the one I use, with a mauled FB lying below 80 corpses and clouds of miasma, while 1 struggling legendary leathercrafter takes the harvest in... if I go back to that fort, the ghosts will surely join me.

[NW_Kohaku]

I personally read the wiki for about 3 days before starting my first fort, and made sure I had a pretty good handle on the concepts before I did anything, so I largely avoided most of the noobie mistakes of starvation, flooding, or failing to lockdown.  (Although I did have a few trap fails.  My first major fort relied upon a set of entrance drawbridges that "clapped" together or flung goblins into a pool with a retractable drawbridge I was filling with alligators.  I then learned that dragons would rather deconstruct a bridge than cross it to kill my dwarves, leaving my dwarves huddled together in the ambush room wondering where the dragon was, while the dragon just sort of stared stupidly at the now-inaccessible fortress, turned around, knocked over my windmill, took a nap, got bored, then tried to leave, but wandered into a cage trap.)

Most of my early Fun was not fortress-threatening.  I killed a half-dozen dwarves at least in my first fort via cave-ins due to stupid things like constructing floors over a diagonal, or removing floors/channeling a roof away in the improper order (as chosen by the dwarves, I just zone-designated,) such that a lone floor tile collapsed. 

The only time I've had a total fortress kill (to anything other than simply not playing a fort anymore because a new version came out or I got bored) was due to the save corruption bugs that caused the whole embark site to collapse into the magma sea. 

[NJW2000]

I don't mean to insult you, but isn't that a little boring?

[NW_Kohaku]

I don't mean to insult you, but isn't that a little boring?

You'd have to be specific as to what you're talking about. 

If you mean reading the wiki for days before actually playing the game, then, honestly, no, it wasn't.  There is a ton of interesting information about the game, and understanding "how it ticks" is honestly in some ways much more interesting than "playing the game properly".  (I generally spend more time in experiment forts than "real" forts, and have been spending pretty decent amounts of time in Adventurer mode since .31 added interesting NPC-created areas, as well...)

[NJW2000]

Hell, I love the wiki!

I just mean isn't it a little boring to have never had a fort fall to death and ashes and madness? I mean, as an experience.

[Space Wizard]

Hell, I love the wiki!

I just mean isn't it a little boring to have never had a fort fall to death and ashes and madness? I mean, as an experience.

I'm going to agree with this guy. Playing it safe 100% of the time in dwarf fortress is losing out on some good times. I mean, there are fortresses I am very careful with, and then there are other "stunt fortresses" that dwarves are unlucky to be a part of.

I read the wiki for days(if not years) before playing too, but when I ran into my first forgotten beast, I decided to let him in to see if maybe my recruits could take care of it. Nope. Fun as hell. First time I lost every dwarf in my fortress. Sooooo much smoke.

[Unit88]

Hell, I love the wiki!

I just mean isn't it a little boring to have never had a fort fall to death and ashes and madness? I mean, as an experience.

I'm going to agree with this guy. Playing it safe 100% of the time in dwarf fortress is losing out on some good times. I mean, there are fortresses I am very careful with, and then there are other "stunt fortresses" that dwarves are unlucky to be a part of.

I read the wiki for days(if not years) before playing too, but when I ran into my first forgotten beast, I decided to let him in to see if maybe my recruits could take care of it. Nope. Fun as hell. First time I lost every dwarf in my fortress. Sooooo much smoke.

I love that with my new fortress it really annoys me that nothing is happening. I really want to try out my traps on some goblins. I even ordered my squad to kill 4 giraffes that were roaming the map. They went Benny Hill and run around everywhere for weeks sometimes attempting a hit but barely ever managed to land one. In the middle of that the giraffes kept scaring the animals on my outside pasture so a bunch of dwarves kept coming out to put them back in. I actually don't know what happened to most giraffes but I know one of them ended up in a cage trap because now I have a war giraffe which killed a mongoose

[NW_Kohaku]

Hell, I love the wiki!

I just mean isn't it a little boring to have never had a fort fall to death and ashes and madness? I mean, as an experience.

I'm going to agree with this guy. Playing it safe 100% of the time in dwarf fortress is losing out on some good times. I mean, there are fortresses I am very careful with, and then there are other "stunt fortresses" that dwarves are unlucky to be a part of.

I read the wiki for days(if not years) before playing too, but when I ran into my first forgotten beast, I decided to let him in to see if maybe my recruits could take care of it. Nope. Fun as hell. First time I lost every dwarf in my fortress. Sooooo much smoke.

I've done things where I lost on purpose, yes, but I don't really count that as "Fun".  It's only Fun when it's a surprise.  I tapped the clown car before doing anything on an embark just to see how fast the clowns could get to the surface, and how little of a chance a reclaim had, for example.  That's not Fun, that's just !!SCIENCE!!

Beyond that, the (lower-case f) fun is in the understanding of the mechanism.  Hence, I tend not to like using the military at all, as it's both fairly random and also not something I can control, and therefore not really a test of me as a player. 

As a player, I generally don't enjoy combat or "challenge" nearly as much as building giant, overly complex megaprojects, anyway, so risk averse behavior suits my chosen pathway to enjoyment of the game just fine.  Sitting there to make double-redundancies for every project is more entertaining than having it go off the rails for the same reason that participating in a sport is more interesting than sitting in the bleachers.

[Dunamisdeos]

I simultaneously discovered aquifers and goblin sieges.

[StagnantSoul]

My first successful fort... I was playing without dfhack or dwarf therapist or any assistance, the z menu and bookkeeper being the only thing keeping me sane-ish, and only understanding a small part of the game, without knowing the wiki or forum existed. Everyone lived off of well-placed wells, no alcohol, and there was only farming aboveground. We were surrounded by a small wooden wall, with a stone drawbridge, over a pit full of raised iron menacing spikes, 3 to a square. I had just a small recruit militia, who trained on troglodytes and whatever came from the caverns. A few times, they were tested by ambushes, and I only lost one. After a while, I reached the population cap. Suddenly, a cyclopse, followed later by a minotaur, then afterwards an ettin came. We killed them, with my massive swarm of war dogs and eight recruits, before It came...

 An ancient hydra, with hundreds of kills to it's name, slaughtered it's way through my military. We only managed to poke an eye and rip some fat before every military dwarf was dead, along with their dogs. So I raised every dwarf into squads, armed each with either a sword or axe as well as a wooden shield, and sent them after the hydra. It may have taken ten minutes irl, but the hydra killed every dwarf, ever man woman and accursed child, only suffering minor cuts and bruises before moving on... For me, it was the loss of my first real fortress... For the hydra, it was just a teusday... 

[Space Wizard]

As a player, I generally don't enjoy combat or "challenge" nearly as much as building giant, overly complex megaprojects, anyway, so risk averse behavior suits my chosen pathway to enjoyment of the game just fine.  Sitting there to make double-redundancies for every project is more entertaining than having it go off the rails for the same reason that participating in a sport is more interesting than sitting in the bleachers.

I don't really see how that analogy applies at all. Sitting in the bleachers while your team loses implies you aren't even playing the game. Losing in Dwarf Fortress feels more like you're playing the sport while your team loses and you're having fun because you're making your opponents pay and work hard for their win.

[HawaiianJon]

My first moment of fun was when I was attacked by an Aquatic, Scaled Tarantula Forgotten Beast.

That bitch thought he could get me when he was required to stay in water:
My 80 dwarves then took the reserve crossbows (The reserve militia = all the fort) and took pot-shots at it.
Only 3 of those fuckers decided to jump in to punch it with their crossbows.

3 months after it arrived; the hundreds of wooden bolts finally killed it... and then I was attacked by a goblin siege.
3 months with the fort sealed up and STILL SHOOTING THE FUCKER; the dwarves were finally able to kill the Aquatic spider from hell and only then I realized that the miasma would make the fort bitchy as all hell.
6 months later; Being unable to bury the bodies (before I knew I could make slabs and engrave them for burial purposes) 3 ghosts managed to kill 2 of my dwarves and set off a tantrum spiral that then caused my marksman to pull the lever to the front door and the 20 goblins riding dragons came in and ate everyone but a baby; who escaped and was eaten by a carp.