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[Pickerel]

My favorite discovery was when I learned that even waterfalls were possible.  It was on one of our dangeorus carp maps, I wanted lots of water so I chose where 2 rivers met.  I dodn;t know about height profiles yet.  They met at a waterfall several levels deep.  Having only recently learned how to farm, I dug out a series such that I mined out on level -1, and the water flowed back and forth until it left out a hole in the wall on level -6 into the next river which was at -7.  My first major success farming got me obsessed with farming, which led to plant , which led to so much more... Furthermore, I decided it would be arbitrarily cool to build a giant dining room like at the local Casino where a waterfall fell through the center of it, so I mined in and made the dining room.  Much to my delight, the dwarves considered it a legendary dining room and got happy thoughts like 'admired a (insert) waterfall lately'.  I then realized just how wonderfully perfectly the code recognizes interesting and deviant construction, and sought to learn more about how the game worked.  So by sheer personal impact, the waterfall was my favorite discovery.

Also, to the meloncholy dwarf that fell only 2 levels: I, last week, had a fort where meloncholy was a problem.  The dwarves thought to throw themselves off the nearest cliff: a 1-z-level channel I used as defense.  They would be stunned, but not hurt, or only minimally hurt.  They would walk up the stairs, and occasionally would try again.  One particular dwarf did this from the start of his meloncholy until he died of thirst.

[ March 15, 2008: Message edited by: Pickerel ]

[Areyar]

YES!

Collapsing a topsoil layer preserves it intact.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1-Find a nice flat plot of pebble/rock-free topsoil.
2-Dig down stairway to the side of the plot, to get in/out.
3-Dig several channels deep to your desired mushroom/tree farm depth, leaving the toplayer in place.
4-remove the accumulated rock spoils.
5-Dig a channel INSIDE the circumferance of your plot on top-level.
!CAUTION! Don't stand on the falling bit!
(miners seem to have a preference for what side of a channel they dig from.)
My miner lies unconcious at the bottom with a broken leg and arm, poor thing.  
6-cover the roof with a floor, maybe a glass one.

Voila, a deep soil layer without water.

Alot of effort for something that is not very usefull.

Could probably also be used to transfer stonetypes to lower-layers.
For those cases where a  vein of ore happens to cross your planned great hall or the rocktype changes halfway into the grand chamber, etc.

[kaypy]

I dont have anything terribly spectacular to add, but I was pleased to find out that being able to [v]iew dead dwarfs in the unit list in recent versions also allows you to tweak their nicknames/profession names.

This led to much digging through gamelog.txt as I set them all to have 'cause of death' instead of profession:

Urdim Udilnekut, violated production order prohibition.
Bembul Uvarinod, eaten by Ice Puddle.
Kulet Othoslimul, wrong place, wrong time, splat.
etc

[psychologicalshock]

I had a goblin boiled in his own vomit.

[Luckymoose]

That a fox pup can kill a macedwarf. It all was to do with my population of foxes at my current outpost. I have 8 of them in my fort.

[greenest banana]

Thieves are opportunistic. I was once ambushed and I ordered all my dwarves inside. There, I raised the drawbridge (As I didn't really have a good military at the time). As soon as I raised the draw bridge, three raccoons made a beeline for my trade depot and stole the gems that my dwarves hadn't bothered to take in over the past 6 months. It was really pretty hilarious how determined they looked as they made their way to the site of the deed.

After that, I decided the main courtyard should also encompass my trade depot.

[Alfador]

quote:Originally posted by Luckymoose:
<STRONG>That a fox pup can kill a macedwarf. It all was to do with my population of foxes at my current outpost. I have 8 of them in my fort.</STRONG>

As I've said before, this is because foxes are so cute, we eet ur face. :3

[KappaDelta]

Coolest discovery, after having played for all of ten minutes:
One marksdwarf and twenty wardogs can martyr themselves taking down two gobbo towers for the glory of the soviet, er, dwarven union.
Seriously, being able to build on civs that already exist=awesome.
Now I'm up to 20+ dwarves and building an army to take down the third, and most well-defended (spear gobbos, 3-4 gobbo guards sitting up top together, normal gobbos in abundance) tower.
That, and finding out that the goblin tribes have names and mint coins. The Bloody fortress of Martyring is currently in possession of no less than thirty coins of various vintage from the goblin civilization of Mong Thong.

EDIT: That, and having my engraver make a well-designed image of a dog striking down a goblin in the main barracks.

[ March 17, 2008: Message edited by: KappaDelta ]

[Puzzlemaker]

Imps actually throw fireballs.  On the first map I played that had magma on it, an imp popped out of the magma and started throwing fireballs around.  I, of course, freaked out, because I was not expecting that at all.  "Oh, an imp.  Hmm.  Doesn't look too fast, my dwarves can prolly get away before he rea- WAS THAT A FIREBALL?"

[bigmcstrongmuscle]

Seeing a cave spider web up and rip apart five dwarves and three war dogs without flinching. I think my eyes bugged out of my head.

[fraeuleinwunder]

I made several discoveries that amused me a lot. The latest was that mad dwarves leave their clothes behind, I literally spit my coke over the keyboard..it was the  comic of the situation that made me laugh so hard, since the dwarf got off his trousers in the crowded dining room.

Other things that impressed me when I started playing some months ago were the vermin hunting abilities of cats ("oh look! the cute c is frolicking towards the large roach! ...erm, are there actually bones on the floor?"), the large variety of animals and enemies and the imports and exports from neighbouring civilisations. "xxx, goblins, offerings: petty annoyance, offerings from  xxx, (your civ): death"
I also love the new deities, the fact that enemy leaders bear names, the new family system..just the huge amount of details in the game. AND the fighting mode, it's extremely cool.

Not a discovery in this way, but I also liked the effect of getting used to the ascii graphics at the very beginning of my dwarfish secret life. At first, I thought, I'd *never* get the hang on it and found it so irritating but after some hours of playing I started to find symbols cute, in a rather strange way. (The mentioned cs for example). I just love how df offers the "engine" for your own imagination: The truly violent/funny/slightly disturbing actions are part of the game, represented by innocent looking symbols, so that the rest is up to your fantasy. That's a lot better than explicit visual violence, in my opinion. It preserves the cuteness and happy, but cruel naivity of the game.  

[ March 19, 2008: Message edited by: fraeuleinwunder ]

[Trollvottel]

I still vividly remember meeting my first GCS in Adventurer mode.

Walk towards the stairs ... strange symbol appears ... uh, retreat?

One keypress later I'd been bitten in the brain, had toxin injected into it, and then got shaken around by the head which separated it from the rest of my body. It all neatly fit on one page, didn't even have to scroll ... *g*

[Kagus]

Discovering that you can take the pants off of a visiting merchant and they don't mind.  Or, in fact, notice.

[Areyar]

Discovering the mouse works.

(You can select a designation tool, say dig, then use left mouse to designate tiles, use right-mouse to move selector-cursor and move in large bounds.)

It really helped with designing my Grand Drinkinhall.  

[Areyar]

Just discovered babies can crawl!
It's mother got knocked out near a cave-in, the bundle moved off on its own...untill momsy came to and collected it.

Also, don't take baby-carriers into combat, they'll drop the infant and it gets trampled on. *sniff*