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[GRead]

Ok, so I've been playing arround recently, starting allot of little forts to look at biomes more closely, and was curious to know what people think of as the most difficult, dangerous, unique, etc. etc. starting locations they've found. I'm thinking generically mind you, no truly unique sights like a certain seed for a 25 GCS cave funplex.

Strangely enough, one of the most ultimately dangerous start locations I had recently was sinister; a sinister savannah I'd picked for its perceived calmness in my search for Sliver Barbs to found my dark cult. Well, I found the sliver barbs, but I also found a near endless supply of harpies, beakdogs, and grimelings that managed to grind my 7 starting dwarves to dust before immigrants arrived. Kill the two harpies? 3 beak dogs show up. Kill them? 3 harpies. they go down? 5 beak dogs on the map!
Eventually the two legendary miners slipped up to a single beak dog and were torn apart when the rest of the pack arrived; the 5 beak dogs went on a rampage and finished the fort off.

Granted, the title of most dangerous wildlife probably goes to undead elephants, but in a way I think their fearsome prowess makes them much less dangerous: while they are massive killing machines, they also get treated with allot more respect. Fewer dwarves die inadvertently to them than they do to lesser threats you'd confront more readily.

[numerobis]

Raccoons are the only animal ever to have killed my starting dwarves while I wasn't looking.  It was, shall we say, embarassing.

[Lyrax]

A sinister ocean was the hardest for me.  One skeletal ocean sunfish wiped the floor with my starting dwarves.

[Retro42]

Hippos......

I'm on a map right now with Hippos, Crocs, and Milkfish.

My first task was to route water to an underground reserve and move entirely undrground.

Retro

[bigmcstrongmuscle]

Started ten squares from a GCS a couple weeks ago. It was very fast and very ugly.

EDIT: Oh, biome-wise. Glaciers are pretty rough, if you don't pack six metric tons of food. Haven't tried deserts, yet, but they sound fun too.

[ March 21, 2008: Message edited by: bigmcstrongmuscle ]

[Mephisto]

I'd say any biome with Nightwings would be pretty difficult. My fairly good crossbowdwarf who was also legendary clerk took down other animals in a few bolts, but he fired a whole stack of 20 or so bolts without even bruising the thing.

Anything with
[NOPAIN][NOBREATHE][NOBLEED][NONAUSEA][NOEMOTION][RECKLESS][NOEXERT][NOFEAR]
has the potential to be extremely deadly. It's also super fast.

[Kalimar]

I once lost a Dwarf to a Sea Lamprey in a what I believed to be a fresh water river. I guess the lamprey just latched onto his face while drinking and dragged him under while his barbed mouth sucked the blood out of him.

Really any biome with water full of fish is dangerous.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

I am not sure about 3D times since I am not masochist enough to try it again, but any area with unicorns is bad news, really bad news in my book. They make any surface interaction a nightmare, disrupting trade by ambushing the caravans and viciously murdering your civilian dwarves.

As in 3D, I once was unlucky to start out in a location with a cave. The terrain was extremely uneven, so my dwarves actually started quite some way away from the wagon (I think the main problem were height levels and the need to go some long detours). The fact that some ratmen were roaming around the wagon chasing away my dwarves intent on equipping themselves with those shiny picks didn't help. I then improvised by drafting a dwarf in hope of chasing away the ratmen so my dwarves could equip themselves... A few minutes later, I abandoned the fortress as that soldier dwarf found out that there was also a GCS near the wagon (^_^;;

Deathworks

[Areyar]

only time I got wiped out was my first fort, starting location was next to an exposed fingers-chasm and a spider followed the smell of dwarves into my main hall.
barely lasted a season.

Most dangerous was a nice mirthfull forest next to a stream, fish killed alot of my thirsty dwarves before I managed to build a well, drain the murky ponds and form a crossbow squad.

Currently exploring a sinister forrest at a 4way stream crossings, in a cliff face overlooking the meet and behind a nice long waterfall.
The map is infested with pools, but not many dangerous fish yet.

I'll look into one of those grey-red areas next, maybe those haunted places are a bit more terrifying. ah, those too.

edit: hmm, haunted places are not good for hunters...take two marksmen to hunt.
Aside from having my marksman killed on the first day, a pretty nice site though, I'll keep this fort. Next: Terror.

[ March 21, 2008: Message edited by: Areyar ]

[GeneralValter]

I was in a terrifying glacier once. I abandoned after ice wolves had eaten about half of my starting dwarves.

Aquifers can be even worse, though. Never doubt the limits of your own stupidity. There's about a 100% chance that you will do Something wrong with it and end up flooding half your fort.

[AlienChickenPie]

I once started on a glacier map with a magma pool and a magma pipe. I carefully carved the creature-filtering fortified channels into the rock, and  channeled through the final square, connecting my safe channels to the imp infested magma pool. I had forgotten to seal that last channel, so surely enough two fire imps climbed out. The crossbow-armed dwarf I sent their way was cooked, and they went upstairs to the section carved into the ice. Then, their burning bodies met the cold ice, and mass meltage ensued. They burned down one more dwarf, and another one died when he and both imps were encased in ice. The place was soon abandoned, but I have half a mind to embark to a similar area again, and find some way to use the aformentioned ice-imp reaction for something awesome.

[ March 21, 2008: Message edited by: AlienChickenPie ]

[Erom]

Using a trapped imp as an ice-melting engine is an amazing idea.

To me, the evil/sinister stuff is pretty easy - the only biome I have real difficulty with is glacier. It's so hard to get a room carved out for your animals to stay warm in before they all freeze to death, and getting farming up and running is a nightmare (and impossible without magma).

[RP]

The worst I've had so far was when my starting crew decided it would be a good idea to park their wagon beside an open chasm and next to 2 GCS and one iron man. You can pretty much tell what happened next.

[Samyotix]

Started one fort on a volcano... when I arrived, an announcement popped up:

"You have found Somethingorother, a Goblin Cave!"

The unit list showed about a dozen elite goblins and some more pages of goblins, all hogging the more interesting parts of the map. I gave up :-)

(I've got the seed and could try to find the location again if anyone's extremely interested.)
EDIT: Tried to find it, failed. Sry.

[ March 23, 2008: Message edited by: Samyotix ]

[RyanW]

I had a GCS ambush about 5 steps from the wagon.  Only the carpenter escaped when the spider became more interested in my dogs.  Still, I tried to continue a solitary life by a small pond, but Mr. Carpenter decides it's worth the risk and makes a run for the booze.

This was before I had a solid grasp of the game, and I just didn't think about forbidding the supplies.