fuckjn connection ate my giant reply >.>
I dunno if I overdug or not... probably, or I hit the bottom of the aquifer without realizing it (Which would also explain why it's not draining down into itself.) Doesn't help that it's all sand, so I can't simply smooth it over.
There's a good tutorial on youtube linked in the wiki, I followed that to do aquifer breaching. You need to carefully dig and wall off early aquifer so as to prevent new water from forming.
Now that I've got migrants (Including two soldiers... but they're currently being wrestlers due to lack of access to the iron under the store)
Shouldn't the soldiers come preequipped with their weapons? Alternatively, goblin snatchers and kobold thieves can give good supply of early metal.
Early militaries are usually made of marksdwarves though, wood or bone bolte are decent weapons agaisnt unarmored foes.
A caravan arrived, and I'd forgot to build a Spiked Wooden Ball or two to ensure I could buy out their food and booze supplies - And while I was scrounging up things to sell (four Capuchin Bone Crossbows, excess medical supplies, a few nice cages)... Despite managing to scrounge up a 50% profit margin in exchange for their wine and ale barrels and Plump Helmets, the traders were instead insulted and left in a huff. If my fort hadn't been so incomplete and unarmed, I probably would have done something very stupid. Well, at least they didn't have any stone anyway.
Likely an elven caravan. They just up and leave if you try to slip 'em anything wooden, even accidentally. Luckily you can simply seize their stuff- won't hurt more than letting them leave angry, although anything you can't use is fundamentarily useless as you can't sell stolen goods unless further labor is done (ie decorations)
So now my fort's out of food and nearly out of booze, I have no farms or stills, and Kobolds have started infesting my fort. At least I have the wall around my area complete, but I need to come up with a better way to handle the four doors.
Give any idlers the Plant Gathering skill and design a large area of the map for plant gathering. Also get a still up and running. Those are priorities. Kobolds aren't much more than an annoyance, if you got any dog train them for war or hunting (prepare a zone for animal training i - t, then give a dwarf the Animal Trainer skill) and post them near the entrance of your fortress via pasture. They'll keep sneaky sneakers busy until marksdwarves come.
Since I don't really have many items and my dwarves will soon run out of happiness due to the sudden loss of food and booze, and conatantly being caught in the rain, I think I may want to abandon and reclaim the fort with a new crew, bringing stone and a better workforce than my "Embark Now!" team.
Abandoning is for pansy elves! Live out the tantrum spiral! See what you can salvage!
On reclaim, all your stuff will be scattered on the map; use the mass designation tool to reclaim stuff (d - b - c)
Oh yeah... I also had a problem getting my dwarves to move all the damn medical supplies out from around the hole I dug to pierce the aquifer. They refused to stockpile them (Though I have several "Universal Stockpiles" meant to hold everything that won't decay), or even move them to the garbage dumps (I had nine idlers refusing to haul the damn medical supplies) So, I finally decided to dig out a small hole and designate it as a Hospital, which seemed to clear that problem up.
If the aquifers still supply water, dwarves are reluctant to go in there. Try to train swimmers so they'll be more likely to path to water.
I personally build swimming pools near aquifers( channel a one-tile aquifer, build a screwpump pointed towards a room and a second pointing to the aquifer, then trap your wannabe swimmers inside by designating them as a military squad then ordering to move in the room. Lock the door, start the first pump 'till the room is at least 4/7 each tile, up to 6/7 is still safe though. While idling, the dorfs will socialize and level up swimming in there. When Adequate or more, use the inside pump to empty the room so it can be reused and unlock the door
Now, either when I reclaim the fort, or if I bother to continue with my current impending disaster, I'm going to build a wooden "Sleeve" of walls around my aquifer-drilling hole, then find a way to drop it and completely wall off the flooding pit so I can continue getting through... the "Penetrating the last aquifer level" set of instructions is beyond my comprehension so far. Expected outcome is me being able to clean up the mess I made down there, then continue as per instructions. Best case scenario, I punch completely through the aquifer layer well into solid rock, and don't have to worry about it anymore. Worst case scenario... I'll be able to experience part of the !!FUN!! that makes Dwarf Fortress so legendary.
Wooden walls will deconstruct on falling, you're better off with glass blocks or clay blocks (build wood furnaces for charcoal, build kiln or glass furnaces to gather clay/sand in bags from predesigned zones, make blocks)
the easiest way to cause cave-ins is to build the part to be dropped, connected to the rest of the floor by a single tile, then deconstruct the tile. This will displace the water and likely send the dwarf who deconstructed the floor flying. Some more exp for doctors!
Hope this helps