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[Spinning Fly]

In elder versions, your dwarves could be "forced to drink vomit lately" to survive
That could allow a 0-points-freezing-area-embark fort to endure, but the feature got removed, in 40d IIRC.

As of now, only drinks and brewable plants can grant you alcohol at embark.
With plants, you must also have some barrels, and craft your ale.
Let's make some math :

• 4pts for the plant
• 3pts for the wood for a barrel. One barrel holds up to 30 units of alcohol.
• The first time, you get 5 units of alcohol for 7points
• The 2,3,4,5 and 6th time, you get 5 units of alcohol for 4points (because no new barrel needed)
• On average 1 unit of alcohol = 0,9 point (instead of 2 if you buy "raw alcohol")

For 6500 units of booze, you need to spend 5850points. For drinks only.... Gonna be fun !

The plants come in stacks of 5 though right?

Well, not at embark. Every 4 points, you get one plant. Which can lead to 5 drink units.

No I mean if you buy say 20 plump helmets at embark, you'd get 4 stacks of 5 plump helmets each, all in 1 barrel. And you'd need 1 empty barrel for each of those stacks to brew them. Optimally you should get a multiple of 5 PHs, so you get the maximum amount of booze per barrel. So the math would be like this:

• 1st 5 PHs = 20 points for 1 stack of 5 PH and 1 barrel = 25 alcohol for 20 points = 0.8 points per unit of booze
• Subsequent 5 PHs (until 60 total) = 20 points for 1 stack of 5 PH + 3 points for barrel/pot = 25 alcohol for 23 points = 0.92 points per unit of booze
• For PH #60-65, it's back to 0.8 points per unit of booze
• For PH #65-120, it's again 0.92 points per unit of booze

In comparison "garden vegetables" like cranberries, grapes etc. cost 2 units per plant, but come in bags rather than barrels. So it's a much simpler formula for those:

• 5 plants = 10 points for 1 stack of 5 plants + 3 points for barrel/pot = 25 units of alcohol for 13 points = 0.52 points per unit of booze

So basically the berries are a hell of a lot cheaper. The only advantage of plump helmets is availability of seeds for underground farming, which is somewhat negated once you wall and tunnel your way out of hell into a cavern full of underground plants ready to be harvested.

Lavish Meals will save you on containers because the stacks are additive.
rat meat[5] + spinach[5] + fish[5] + hen egg[5] = roast rat meat[20] + 3 possible empty barrels.

IIRC, embarking with rat meat[26] results in 1 barrel with 5x rat meat[5], and a 2nd barrel with 1x rat meat[5], right?

You could just get 1 unit of meat from each animal on the list, that'll get you 1 barrel per unit of meat (e.g. kiwi meat and dog meat would come in separate barrels). Each variety and gender of fish comes in its own barrel as well (so cave fish ♂ and cave fish ♀ would come in separate barrels). I usually find there's about 60 or so varieties of 2-point meat and fish you can get, but this varies depending on your home civ's biome and other stuff.

Once you've exhausted all the varieties of 2-point meat, you could just load up on rock nuts at 1 point per nut. Wiki says that despite supposedly being edible raw, dwarves won't actually eat them, but they're still cookable. You could also mill and press the rock nuts to get 2 cookable ingredients per unit (oil + press cake), which might come in handy if farming isn't possible. And if farming is possible, then quarry bushes would help massively.

Again, source of container is the limiting factor during embark. 

Another way to avoid the container conundrum would be to use a quantum stockpile for food, then you'd only need 1 wood for a minecart, then all the barrels/pots would be freed for brewing

1 copper smelted = 8 bars, costs 3 for a malachite ore/native copper?
1 cassiterite + 1 malachite = 8 bronze, costs 9 total.
1 cassiterite + 1 tetrahedrite = 8 bronze bars, with 20% silver bars, costs 15 total.
10 bars to make full armor uniform: mail shirt (2 bars), helm (1), gauntlets (1), high boots (1), greaves (2), breastplate (3), and at least 6 fuel. 
Weapons costs vary, 1 to 3 bars.
Depends on availability of bit-coal or lignite to help with fuel.

I'm pretty sure all the dwarven weapons need only 1 bar, unless you're talking about candy. Don't think fuel would really be a problem considering that the magma sea is right overhead. But considering that bituminous coal costs only 3 points, you could just buy that en masse instead of whatever other non-economic stone you were going to get.

[Spriggans]

I like how a topic about invading hell turns out to become a topic debating the efficiency of embarks :p

In comparison "garden vegetables" like cranberries, grapes etc. cost 2 units per plant, but come in bags rather than barrels. So it's a much simpler formula for those:

    5 plants = 10 points for 1 stack of 5 plants + 3 points for barrel/pot = 25 units of alcohol for 13 points = 0.52 points per unit of booze

Now, that's very cheap !
Never thought to math the brewing of vegetables. I guess because I have never really messed up with them before... Vegetables are too, you know... elven, for me...
On the flip side, with PH, you get seeds, wich I think you can cook, but not on their own. Seeds need to have a solid food to be cooked with.
Vegetables seems to be the way to go anyhow.


And for the metal weapons, I'm pretty sure that Diamond will get attacked very very quickly. So, there is no point/time to take metals, and dig for magma.
Also the very point of the run is to die in a horrible way escape hell. Thus, reaching magma pretty much means that the challenge would be completed.

For the weaponry, I would'nt bother with armor because metal is not viable in terms of price, and leather is just not good enough.
You can get wooden spears for 9, copper warhammers for 18 (these could kill "easily" inorganic deamons if one dwarf manages to hit).

Also, with the new mechanics of morale, dwarves will probably never attack deamons, and flee from them unless they have good discipline, to get to proficient, it costs another 45points per dwarf -.-'
Being a coward is a lot cheaper...

[Diamond]

I like how a topic about invading hell turns out to become a topic debating the efficiency of embarks :p

In comparison "garden vegetables" like cranberries, grapes etc. cost 2 units per plant, but come in bags rather than barrels. So it's a much simpler formula for those:

    5 plants = 10 points for 1 stack of 5 plants + 3 points for barrel/pot = 25 units of alcohol for 13 points = 0.52 points per unit of booze

Now, that's very cheap !
Never thought to math the brewing of vegetables. I guess because I have never really messed up with them before... Vegetables are too, you know... elven, for me...
On the flip side, with PH, you get seeds, wich I think you can cook, but not on their own. Seeds need to have a solid food to be cooked with.
Vegetables seems to be the way to go anyhow.

Also, if you are not going for numbers, you can also bring a dozen different units of milk, each costs 1 point and comes with a barrel. As an added benefit can be turned into cheese with no extra investment.

And for the metal weapons, I'm pretty sure that Diamond will get attacked very very quickly. So, there is no point/time to take metals, and dig for magma.
Also the very point of the run is to die in a horrible way escape hell. Thus, reaching magma pretty much means that the challenge would be completed.
For the weaponry, I would'nt bother with armor because metal is not viable in terms of price, and leather is just not good enough.
You can get wooden spears for 9, copper warhammers for 18 (these could kill "easily" inorganic demons if one dwarf manages to hit).

During the testing embark I landed right on top of one clown, that is fast alright. And there is more to that then just making it out, surface holds a certain challenge as well that I haven't tried to deal with with yet. Caverns might be challenging too, considering potential initial losses.

Also, with the new mechanics of morale, dwarves will probably never attack deamons, and flee from them unless they have good discipline, to get to proficient, it costs another 45points per dwarf -.-'
Being a coward is a lot cheaper...

Didn't even think about this. Needs more testing, I guess.

[Rumrusher]

so on this subject I found that you can do this with out dfhack... kinda.
you need at least access point to hell and say one elephantman(if one can't be found a rhino or bearman would also work) adventurer to safely buggylug everything from the wagon on top of pretty good dancing/Speaker elephantman so you can 'companionize' your starting group and/or recruit more brave warriors who won't be apart of the civ when you do unretire the site
it's possible to retire the adventurer in hell if you're in the player fort site and they will stay in that position when you transfer over to fort mode.