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[CulixCupric]

What are your embarking tips and tricks?

mine is this: since cassiterite and malachite are only 6 points each, embark with a bunch of them, so you can make bronze from the beginning. it yields 8 bars per 12 points, and a bronze bar costs 25 points each at embark, you get over 16 times the bronze bars.

[Orange Wizard]

Basic principle is to bring raw materials instead of the finished products (except in the case of anvils because you need an anvil to make an anvil).
Even sparsely forested biomes have more than enough wood to supply a growing fort. There's pretty much no reason to bring logs unless you're planning to vacate the surface (evil biome, for example) or absolutely no trees will grow (which is only wasteland and tundra/glacier, AFAIK; sand deserts will grow saguaro).
Farming is very overpowered and even a small plot can produce plenty of food for a fort. There's generally no reason to bring more than a little food/booze at embark, unless you're in a biome with no soil or water to make mud, or you're like me and tend to put off farming in favour of buying plants from caravans.
Also, egg-laying birds (geese are the best IIRC) provide unlimited free food if you pasture them over a nest box, which is more efficient but slightly more expensive than farms.

In many cases spending points on skills is actually pointless, because dwarves can master skills in a matter of years anyway. Unless you want to start churning out high-quality items immediately, you're better off spending the points on ores or animals than skills for your dwarves.

...

I actually follow none of that advice. Huh.

[Zuglarkun]

Certain skills are tougher to train than others at the outset; diagnostician, building designer, animal trainer, dodging, armor user, etc... I find spending points on those skills usually pays off later on as training is difficult for those skills plus its unlikely you are able to encounter migrants that have more than novice levels in those skills. Other skills like mining, masonry are easy to train at the start. I particularly like getting a pair of military dwarves; each with 5 levels in teacher and the other 5 levels dedicated to armor user and dodging so they can mentor the rest of my military once they reach legendary status. I don't bother with weapon skills because those train much faster than the rest.

If you are short on embark points, training axes chop trees as well as normal axes do. Saves you embark points for other luxuries.

Reduce the amount of food items assigned to you at the start to gain some points back, and use them to buy one of each food item available of the same cost or cheaper. Fish is particularly good for this as its only 2 points and your male and female varieties count as separate item categories. This gives you an extra barrel for each new category of food items you purchase at no extra cost. The same applies to booze.

Plant gathering is insanely useful as a starting skill ever since the update to surface fruits and plants. Its useful as a last resort if you suddenly run out of plants for booze, and if your area is abundant in surface fruits and plants, it can be just as good as farming.

If you are paranoid of failing moods like myself, buy some leather, silk cloth, yarn cloth, metal ore, etc... with your embark points to avoid the mad rush for materials later on.

If you are very particular about min maxing, check your embark screen for clothing and armor your civilization produces. Sometimes your civilization does not produce the standard fare items like shirts, tunics, high boots and so on. I got an embark that was limited to only vests for the upper body clothing and no high boots.

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

I always embark with many more turkeys than needed for egg production. Leather goes from 5☼ upwards, while a turkey is 6☼ and also yields bones and meat.

[Skullsploder]

I usually embark with a roleplayish set of skills with all the dwarves maxed out in very different areas so they can each be the head of a particular industry in the fort. If I'm embarking somewhere with ANY vegetation, then ALL my other embark points go into an anvil and either cassiterite+copper ore or iron ore+flux. Usually cassiterite+copper ore. Sometimes I bring bituminous coal as well, simply because it's so much quicker and easier than burning wood for fuel - bituminous coal gives you net 8 units of fuel per job, whereas burning wood gives you 1.

You really really don't need to bring along anything else. At embark, set a gather zone and make a dwarf your designated herbalist, deconstruct the wagon, make a carpenter's shop with one log and a training axe with another. Then use the training axe to start chopping down trees. At the same time, designate your ore as non-economic, and build smelters, wood furnaces, and a forge. Then just make a pick and start churning out metal arms and armour while you use the ridiculously abundant wood and stone for everything else. Even if there's an aquifer in the way, you can easily bring enough ore for a full squad's worth of steel equipment on embark, or 4 squads if you chose bronze.

[mgotthard]

Always swap out the pig tail items for cave spider silk items (I.e sacks, rope, whatever) Or just bring heaps of thread and weave to cloth and make it on site.

Ditch the wheelbarrows and make them from wood (they cost a ludicrous 50 each). 

Bring dogs, not war dogs.

If you can get your hands on lignite or coal, definitely stock a lot of it; especially bituminous coal which can give you scads of Coke for your forges for very little effort.  And maybe a bar of charcoal to jump start Coke burning, rather than having to set up a wood burners' workshop.

[FrisianDude]

Basic principle is to bring raw materials instead of the finished products (except in the case of anvils because you need an anvil to make an anvil).

and liquor. Thou Shallt Embark With Liquor.

Also my current biome is partially desert-like and grew saguaro like you said. Also highwood and gingko. Slightly southwards a slightly different biome with different trees which may have influenced that. When I arrived barely any trees and I'm now thinking of axing the entire topside once I get my woodcutters to do what I want - the stupid things actually obscure my field of fire.

[martinuzz]

- You can determine which dwarf becomes your expedition leader, by making sure it gets some social skills (persuader, intimidator , liar, pacifier, judge of intent, conversationalist, comedian, did I forget one?), or at least one point higher in one of those skills than any other embark dwarf.
It won't ensure that your expedition leader becomes mayor, because it's possible for migrants to arrive that are more sociable, but it does increase the odds of your expedition leader's chances to get elected. If you don't like mandates, you can pick a dwarf with as little object likes as possible, or none at all.

- If you don't like your starting 7, you can Escape >> Abort the embark and try again to get a reroll on the starting seven. Which is why it's a good idea to make this the very first thing to look at when embarking, so you don't lose any more work than picking the site on the worldmap. Note that calendar advance is rolled back when you abort, so it's absolutely and completely free to do so.

- bring some gypsum plaster, if you think dwarves could break bones before the first caravan arrives. Not sure if splints alone can fix any fracture.

[martinuzz]

Also my current biome is partially desert-like and grew saguaro like you said. Also highwood and gingko. Slightly southwards a slightly different biome with different trees which may have influenced that. When I arrived barely any trees and I'm now thinking of axing the entire topside once I get my woodcutters to do what I want - the stupid things actually obscure my field of fire.

Yeah, one of my current forts has suguaro and highwood as well. Started with a few trees on the map, now the entire map is covered in them as if it were a rainforest biome. They be growing faster than I can chop them down or process all the wood. Seriously contemplating coating the surface in magma. In my other fort I embarked on rock. No vegetation. Dwarven caravans can bring more than enough wood to last a year, even without the caverns. Max out demand on all wood types when chatting with the liaison, and you'll get 200 wood, if it's not more. The only regret I have now is that, with no vegetation, there's no wild bee hives. So honey production is sadly impossible.

[Findulidas]

Wooden spiked balls are worth stupid amounts. Just embark with a carpenterx5 and you are set for the first traders.

Embark with dogs, everyone loves dogs.

Quickly channeling down can save you from evil mists. Its also helpful to quickly destroy the wagon and build a meeting hall in a safe spot to get the dogs down.

[Skorpion]

Logs. Plenty of them.
Same for coal. Bituminous coal by preference. Make sure there's plenty for steel production.
Breeding pair of regular dogs, no war or hunting. Train them onside.
Bring raw materials instead of finished goods, as far down the chain as possible. Breed your initial animals if you can keep them alive.

[FantasticDorf]

Basic principles

- Lightweight is good
- Get inside/underground and hit the caverns as soon as possible
- If you can find all the plants you need guranteed dont bring helmets or anything else, only dwarven ale and beer (summertime beers to compliment your spring wine and rum) herbalists train fast so leave them to it
- 15 is a good number of seeds for 2 1x3 plots and 1 1x7 plot each, plant your seeds in accordance to starter dwarf grower skill, keeping to the 3x3's or 1x7 individually if its small
- bring plenty of meat/(and/or)/eggs and cook them immediately with your experienced cook to provide a food source to last a while or sell
- Hold onto your starter animals and force feed them for migrant waves later who may bring appropriate breeding partners.
- 1 block made of magma safe materials (or alternatively charcoal if you have none to hand via your civ) can make a wood furnace to use and kick start metal-working, bringing another or more can get enough reactions to smelt 1 piece of ore (1 piece that could become anything useful such as a trade bin for elf trading)
- Metal bins are preferable if you're really bringing them along for trading purposes and convenience to your sore fingers though wooden ones are easily producible (quantum dump the metal bins onto a special trade good pile close to the depot to transfer the goods from one to another).
- Hollowing out 'dead' space in corridors (2/3 block wide) for non specific temples (& space for well decorated graves) makes dwarves happy and therefore stopss insanity taking hold before your dwarves have gotten established and the real fun begins.
- Soldiers spend more time soldiering and less time dawdling if they are supplied with a cheap leather flask, it also means they wont run to the nearest source of water when you may need them to stand around a while and oversee hauling goes undisturbed. (bringing 1 yak (/domestic animal) flask on embark recommended for your militia chief)

Advanced concept cheatsheet

- IRL make a list of all the things you may need.
- Work out the raw material cost of each item 1 wood log etc including cheat sheet melting.
- If you want a immediate bar of copper, melt down your starter axe and replace it with a wooden training axe, with additional tetrahedrite or copper nuggets, the 125% return value of the axe will milk out more copper metal for your next reaction.
- Sheep can grow force fed on plump helmets in a cage and still be milked/sheared in harsh conditions via a lock in room (I personally like to use grates because they inspire positive thoughts when decorated as dividing corridor facing walls on animal pens) sheep and pigs are your go-to animals for livestock should you choose to bring them
- A herd of animals in a cage can eat up harvested plant seeds from herbalism and farming for you, just dont let them eat you out of a house and a home.
- Everything wooden you 'bring on embark' must be fungiwood because it is the light and therefore objects are hauled faster (with cavern diving, you wont notice the contrast in wood anyway with what you bring back)
- Make wood objects using the carpenter, a high skilled creative one will produce high quality ones fast, better than ones you can bring yourself.
- Only ever assign creative attribute dwarves to crafting jobs and divide them on strength, high STR (masonry/stonecrafting - throw in some adequate levels for weaponsmith, armour and metal to invoke potential moods) Low STR (Carpentry *skilled is good situationally*, weaving and other lightweight jobs optional, depending on access to wood, if you have a spare low STR creative dwarf, assign them to cooking and brewing)
- abort embark and re-roll if you get bad dwarves
- build two of every workshop if resources allow, and assign via profile two experts to one, and all the inexperienced ones to the other (with the exception of positive creatives with relevant attributes to the master workshop regardless of skill) discern what you want in bulk (blocks for instance) against what you want in pristine quality

Bring dogs, not war dogs.

- I sincerely disagree with statements on dogs, war dogs are supreme defensive animals and breed extremely fast, bring four (two of each gender) for guranteed pups (which then can be seperated and puppy farmed into more dogs), tagging them along with people who travel outside (woodcutters,
herbalists, soldiers on defensive positions) will keep them largely safe.

- Bringing a manager and a broker is a second priority to assigning craftdwarves but is vital by the time the first migrant wave comes in to structure your existing workshops with manager profiles, a broker will also let you sell spare prepared food

[Orange Wizard]

You don't need to bring someone with broker skills, you can train that immediately when a caravan arrives:

Set the depot to "trader requested" and "anyone may trade". If you want a specific dwarf to be broker (I find it usually doesn't effect much) just make everyone else start hauling rocks or whatever.
Open the trade screen once, then close it without doing any trading. Assign the chosen dwarf to the broker noble position. Congrats, you now have a free Adequate Broker.

- I sincerely disagree with statements on dogs, war dogs are supreme defensive animals and breed extremely fast

War dogs breed normal dogs so you still have to train their offspring for war anyway. The extra 15-point cost isn't always worthwhile, unless you're embarking to a dangerous area where your dwarves will need defences immediately and you don't want to assign military skills.

[FrisianDude]

I agree with Orangizard. Git dogs, have any dwarf not immediately striking the earth or the trees train them to warpooches and you'll have them trained before digging out an office and seven bedrooms.

[FantasticDorf]

You don't need to bring someone with broker skills, you can train that immediately when a caravan arrives:

Set the depot to "trader requested" and "anyone may trade". If you want a specific dwarf to be broker (I find it usually doesn't effect much) just make everyone else start hauling rocks or whatever.
Open the trade screen once, then close it without doing any trading. Assign the chosen dwarf to the broker noble position. Congrats, you now have a free Adequate Broker.

- I sincerely disagree with statements on dogs, war dogs are supreme defensive animals and breed extremely fast

War dogs breed normal dogs so you still have to train their offspring for war anyway. The extra 15-point cost isn't always worthwhile, unless you're embarking to a dangerous area where your dwarves will need defences immediately and you don't want to assign military skills.

Though i can agree to a extent on ease of training, the development of the broker skills any further than that is largely dependent on the dwarf's capabilities for social skills and trading essential skills, dragging it up to 'competent' at embark even on a 'bad dwarf' is sufficient enough to stop the skill stagnating between waiting trading seasons if you're A - not trading a lot of goods for micro individual trades or B - not receiving additional caravans, until some migrants arrive with the necessary skills.

Having a specifically bonded war-dog pet is a buff to any dwarf individually because of the obvious security and comforting positive mood implications, it also saves money in investing in a animal trainer off the bat when you have supplies to buy.