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[Strik3r]

A lot of stuff actually.

I finally started trying to get properly into fortress mode and make my first proper fort.
It's surprisingly enough not dead yet and on the latter half of its second year.

There was a bit of a scare very early on. I decided the best way to properly learn fortress mode was to do a minimal start with as few things and skills as possible. Started with all peasants and all.
Turns out the start was a bit too minimal, i forgot to bring any axes for cutting trees. I got really lucky in how it played out though. I had hit an ore of silver during the making of a spiral ramp downwards.
I also had three mysterious pieces of fungiwood in my embark wagon.  Made a wood furnace, one piece was turned into charcoal to make a silver bar, which was then turned into a silver battleaxe. Pretty decent.

Early in the second year, i had my first accident with a drawbridge. Made a pretty large drawbridge to act as my main gate/future gobbo crusher. Figured out all the steps to link it up to a lever just fine, had to test it of course, lifted it up, works well. Throw the lever again, zoom to bridge and notice a glassmaker gingerly prancing toward the closed(!) drawbridge. Tried to draft him into a military squad in hopes that ordering him to move somewhere would cause him to turn around. Nope, he kept walking straight under the closed drawbridge... And *CRUNCH!* goes the glassmaker. I simply put an order in the mason's workshop for a slab.

Right now i have a possessed hunter in a craftsdwarf's workshop. He wants rough gems, bars, cut gems and stone. I have all of those things, but he still hasn't picked them up and begun making his artifact. I know for a fact he'll not do so, and will go insane... *sigh* queue another slab or few. Lets hope he doesn't berserk... Maybe i need an ad hoc militia squad just in case?

[Quaksna]

Yeah it's good to get military early on, because in Dwarf Fortress, stuff happens.

Strange moods are dangerous to both dorf's and the player's insanity. I would check the gems again, sometimes you ran out of either type. Cloth is tricky, cuz he might want one from plant thread or animal wool.

Congrats on the fort, good luck!

[Schmaven]

Could a moody dwarf only use a certain type of metal bar?  If you're lucky, maybe you just need to smelt something else.

[anewaname]

If I recall correctly what others have posted, once your fort produces candy wafers, dwarfs will want them above all other metals including over preferred metals, meaning if a dwarf moods then using Stocks menu to forbid all your candy will not help.

I specifically target dwarfs that prefer maces to ensure their mooding-skill is not Weaponsmith (so if they show up with Weaponsmith skill, so I disable their weaponsmith skill and make them craft a few thousand bone bolts).

[Strik3r]

Day 2
Everything has gone to hell in a handbasket. 

So the possessed hunter... Yeah he went insane. Tried a bunch of things to save him, didn't work. He did end up going berserk. Thankfully he encountered my legendary miner, she used her trusty pick to cleave the berserk dwarf asunder, who then had to be interred in a coffin... in 5 parts, with not a scratch on the miner. Unfortunately, i think she was lost in one of the later incidents.

Anyway, the theme of this post is: Don't let DF noobs near water. 3 water projects, 3 (partial) failures.

First up, i used an aquifer to make a cute little mist generator. Unfortunately, the evaporation chamber underneath was too small and water started building up. Initially widened the room from a 7x7 to a 9x9. Still wasn't enough. Widened the path leading to said chamber to a 9 wide, in hopes that the increased surface area would spread the water out enough to allow it to evaporate... Nope. Still building up and threatening to (very slowly) flood my workshop level.

Second failure: i had an idea for a surface-level defence system for a while. Summary: A bunch of 1 tile wide and 10 tile long walkways covered with weapon traps, above a "moat" 2 z-levels below, with liftable drawbridges covering the whole thing to allow wagons to get to the trade depot.
I was impatient with digging the moat, causing several cave-ins and killing two of my dwarves. in the end, i canceled last of the channeling to limit casualties, so some floors remain above the water.
Otherwise the moat flooded fine, I used a river to fill it.

I also realized the need for a well, being impatient as i am, rather than waiting for a light aquifer to fill the cistern. So, what did i do? I split the channel i did for the moat, the one that comes from a river and snaked it all the way down to the planned cistern. I forgot water pressure exists, and turned my cute little 3x3 cistern into a fountain. It is currently causing some problems on my current mining level. I fear this may have also compromised the moat, as the tiles constantly flicker between 6 and 7 water level, so it may be unable to consistently drown anything that may fall into it.

Despite this ongoing downward spiral of stupidity, caused solely by me, i've not had so much fun with a game in a long while. Seeing how i'll screw up next and how i'll fix it is a big part of the fun for me.

[orius]

It's part of the learning process.

[Maloy]

I'm building my largest artificial cavern layer yet
It will cover the entire map and be 7 layers deep. For aesthetic it will have pillars throughout and as my dwarves dig I'm gonna let them engrave it.
Sort of leaving their mark on the world where no one will ever see it but they still know its there!
Mean time I'm using all that stone for blocks for building a highway network all throughout the surface for caravans. I really don't wanna leave this cavern layer covered in stone so I'm trying to keep up with moving it all to the surface via mine carts


my other main fort I'm building a military surface fort while we carve out spires in the caverns for major functions. I'm kind of time skipping sort of so my dwarves are more trained and I can get ready for the exciting(to me) phase of conquering and expanding

[orius]

Silly villain reveals how she's up to no good.

[Splint]

Molcet Piboewom was a human hammerman was the only non-diplomat visitor to ever show up to my tavern for the past few years, he would show up every few seasons, sometimes it would go a whole year without me seeing him.
This year he arrived on the wrong season, during a siege and was killed. I will miss him, unfortunately his body was uncerimonously dumped into the atom smasher, since you can't bury visitors.

Can't bury them with full honors, but you can still make a token grave for them with a forbidden coffin and a slab. That's what I do for slain outsiders who didn't earn my ire anyway.

[Shonai_Dweller]

The visitors in my fortress are fed up of the year-long dwarf siege going on outside and want to go home. And some of the more daring ones have figured out how.

A climb down the well and out into the third cavern layer and freedom beyond is the preferred route of the agile dark elves (only one has drowned so far).

For others, there's a far more precarious route involving clambering over the top of the magma forge walls and around the rim of a magma tube. Then freedom is just a short walk, beyond the huge humanoid composed of hematite with four broad horns and webs. None have made it yet...

Dwarves in the fortress are all safe for now. Blissfully unaware that if a flying FB visits, it'll be the death of them all.

[Loam]

I will miss him, unfortunately his body was uncerimonously dumped into the atom smasher, since you can't bury visitors.

I use a corpse stockpile in my catacombs as a "foreigner's graveyard" - have to manually weed out pets and the occasional troll/giant/werebeast, but that's not a big hassle.

[Schmaven]

I will miss him, unfortunately his body was uncerimonously dumped into the atom smasher, since you can't bury visitors.

I use a corpse stockpile in my catacombs as a "foreigner's graveyard" - have to manually weed out pets and the occasional troll/giant/werebeast, but that's not a big hassle.

That's a good idea.  I might tweak it a bit and use a dump zone to put foreign corpses in their mausoleums. 

[Shonai_Dweller]

Eshtan Relicfreezes the Momentous Glazes of Distinction dreamt of becoming a legendary warrior, and that dream was realized here at the fortress of Drilledmanors. Axe Lord and captain of the Silvery Yells, a motley crew of mercenaries. He's outlived human mercs, dark elf swordmasters, and various poets press-ganged into service. Not one to hide behind his larger comrades, he's always first into battle. In the past 6 years he's clocked up 52 kills including a giant and a Cyclops

With an artifact axe in his one hand (the other bitten off years ago by a giant snake) and clad entirely in steel scavenged from the battlefield, he's a force to be reckoned with.

Today I noticed that he actually owns his own grave. Sure enough, it's sitting there empty in the graveyard, marked property of the Momentous Glazes of Distinction. I don't know when that happened, but it seems appropriate.

[nezclaw]

started a new fort, having finally updated my version.
it was going pretty well! nothing too bad, although there's a light aquifer thats pissing me off.
then i get a forgotten beast. a great winged blob of mud (although idk if it actually flew). you'd think it'd be easy to dispatch, but no, it was a webspitter. tore through my fort like a hot knife through butter. why i put only a cage trap corridor separating basement access from my hospital is beyond me.

eventually it does die! only, there's a necromancer visiting. he ends up involved. through some divine providence i end up with four risen butchers and one reanimated hand that's quickly dispatched.
i lost more than half my fort in that. i think 27 dead. including the necromancer. and two of my living dwarves are trapped in cages.
i also have a hunter running around unclothed that i can't do anything with despite him appearing to be a full member of the fort?  actually scratch that, he's clothed now, (the dead don't need clothes after all) but i still can't do anything with him.

as soon as I unpaused i got some undead invading. i have no military of any kind. i do have most of a defensive wall built but there are still two gaps in it and i haven't rigged the bridge gate.

edit: OH LOOK A NECROMANCER
edit2: THREE OF THEM. at least they took off and the undead didn't actually make it to the fort. small mercies.

[Bogotyr]

Today I noticed that he actually owns his own grave. Sure enough, it's sitting there empty in the graveyard, marked property of the Momentous Glazes of Distinction. I don't know when that happened, but it seems appropriate.

I believe this happens when a dwarf has lost body parts.  The grave is allocated for the burial of those parts (and for the rest to join them eventually).  I have a spearmaster who got his teeth knocked out and he has a coffin marked for himself that presently contains just his teeth.