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[Thallone]

NO miners. My scribe can do that for 6 months or so, then someone else takes over.

1 Mason<5>,Mecahnic<5>
1 TreeCutter<5>,Carpenter<5>
1 Organiser<1>,Appraiser<1>,Intimidator<1>,Liar<1>,Negotaiator<3>,Persuader<3>
1 Weaponsmith<5>,Armorer<1>,Metalsmith<1>,Metalcrafter<1>,FurnaceOperator<1>,Boyer<1>
1 Weaver<5>,Marksdwarf<5>
1 Grower<5>,Cook<5>
1 Grower<5>,Brewer<5>

[RogerN]

My startup skills vary somewhat, but I'm extremely consistent with the following:

- One dwarf is maxed on Armorsmith
- One dwarf is maxed on Siege Engineer
- At least two dwarves with Novice Appraiser

Armorsmith and Siege Engineer tend to be very expensive and/or time consuming to train, so I like to get a head start.  I frequently include a maxed Weaponsmith also, but I tend to put a higher priority on high quality armor.

I definitely recommend starting with two appraisers.  If your only appraiser gets killed then it's quite obnoxious to train another one, so it's good to have a backup.  Besides, it only costs 5 points to bring another novice.

[Deto]

Guess my start isn't average one then, looking at how other people start  

I start with:

1 newbie miner/1 grower
1 newbie miner/1 grower
1 newbie miner/1 grower
1 newbie woodcutter/1 grower
1 proficient carpenter/bower
1 proficient mason/armorcrafter
1 proficient weaponsmith with 2 in appraising, and 1 record/organize/persuade

Equipment wise, I drop the two steel axes and replace them with 5 tower cap logs, 5 copper bars. I buy 1 pickaxe more. Then I take 2 dogs and 2 cats and spend remaining points of seeds and such.

First things I mine till I get 2 rocks and set the smithes to build forge / woodburner and then I burn the logs and make the missing axe and make rest 4 to weapons of my choice for immigranting soldiers.

Then I quickly mine foodstorage and farm under grass and start farming. After these are set up, I start building the fortress  

[Gislamo]

I always end up with well over 15k in food stores by the third or fourth year =/, nevertheless, I use the following:

-Dump the anvil

-Miner(10)/Appraiser/Novice Liar/Persuader
-Miner(10)/Mason(10)
-Cook(10)/Grower(10)
-Brewer(10)/Grower(10)
-Fisherdwarf(10)/Novice swimmer/Fish Cleaner (9)
-Metalsmith(10)/Stoneworker(10)
-Carpenter(10)/Wood Cutter(10)

Buy about 10 dogs/cats, 84 booze, the rest in seeds ( 100 of each: Plump Helmet, Cave wheat, Pig tail, Sweet Pods), a few rock nuts /dimple, and the remaining points in turtles. I never had a fortress die: the insane wealth generated keeps me rich and the food prevents starvation...

[Forumsdwarf]

1 maxxed farmer
1 leader, all points spent on leadership skills
1 maxxed miner
1 maxxed axedwarf / novice woodcutter
3 maxxed marksdwarves / novice ambusher

The farmer and mayor are critical personnel who never fight.
The miner can fight with his pick & mining skill.
The axedwarf cuts wood.  Woodcutting levels on its own, but axedwarf is very hard to train, so I go for the military build.
1 of the marksdwarf / hunters really is a hunter, the rest are the shop workers.  Once I divide up the tasks they each learn on the job.

I once got my starting group wiped by a pack of moledogs, so I go for the paranoid military start.  The big advantage to this start is that before you even build a single practice bolt or hold your first wrestling match in the barracks you have a troop of minutemen ready to secure the area.
You can also bring in a whole bunch of meat if that's what floats your boat -- 3 of your crew are hunters if you choose to employ them that way.

[ January 15, 2008: Message edited by: Forumsdwarf ]

[Hussell]

There are a few general principles I've found useful for starting skills. First, you're restricted to 10 levels per dwarf, with a maximum of 5 levels in any one skill, and each level in a particular skill gives you more experience points than the last. Therefore, taking 5 levels in two different skills will give your dwarfs the most starting experience. (Most tasks give 30 experience points, so a dwarf with 2 proficient skills will have about 67 tasks worth of extra experience over a dwarf with 10 novice skills.)

Second, try to arrange combinations of skills so that your dwarfs can work in parallel instead of blocking themselves. For example, I can't understand why so many people take a Woodcutter/Carpenter. Assign these jobs to different dwarves, and one can refill the woodpile while the other depletes it (and a third hauls the wood). In general, avoid giving two skills required in the same supply chain to the same dwarf. (Grower/Brewer, for example. Brewer produces seeds needed by the Grower, so they often need to be working at the same time.)

Third, avoid giving two extremely time-consuming jobs to the same dwarf. Give your dwarfs one time consuming and one rarely used job, if possible.

I originally used the following build, which makes the first year or two really easy:

Miner/Mechanic - Mining takes a lot of time, Mechanics, very little

Miner/Carpenter - Carpentry is kept to a minimum to conserve wood

Mason/Building Designer - Yes, not parallel. The exception that proves the rule. Building design often happens in hard-to-get-to places, so having a second dwarf walk out to finish the work started by the mason wastes a lot of time. Which means you can build your Trade Depot before the caravan leaves.

Wood Cutter/Fisherdwarf - Wood cutting is higher priority than fishing, so your dwarf will stop fishing to cut down 20 trees to make beds for new immigrants. Also, both jobs are outdoors, so he won't have to walk far to start work.

Grower/Fish Cleaner - Growing is very time consuming, especially if you turn off "All dwarves harvest". Fish cleaning takes little time and can be done in batches.

Brewer/Cook - Complementary skills. Generally, you're either brewing things or cooking them, but not both. Neither are particularly time consuming, so this dwarf does some hauling as well.

Appraiser/Negotiator - The mayor/manager/broker/bookkeeper. Never, ever, take record keeping. It's the easiest job to train to legendary from 0th level.

Later, I realized some skills are much easier to train than others, and some improve procuction speed but not quantity or quality. So now I also try to take skills that are hard to train up and affect the quality and/or quantity of the product.

Armorsmith/Mechanic - starts off as a 0th level Miner, converts to armorsmithing once the fortress has more dwarves. There's conflicting information about whether mechanical quality has an effect on traps. I think it does, and training a mechanic from scratch is annoyingly wasteful.

Glassmaker/Siege Engineer - also a 0th level Miner. Glassmaker later (could be some other time-consuming skill). Siege Engineers are hard to train, because they require vast amounts of wood.

Mason/Building Designer - still one of the most effective combos. The work required of masons just keeps increasing as your fortress expands.

Bowyer/Weaponsmith - two very low use, hard to train, but valuable skills. Make this one a 0th level Fisherdwarf/Wood Cutter, which will suck up all his time until you start building weapons.

Grower/Carpenter - Turn off "All dwarves harvest" and your grower will increase in skill much faster. Highly skilled growers produce more plants per seed, which saves time and stockpile space. Carpenters make beds, barrels, and bins, and not much else, which doesn't take too much time when they're skilled.

Brewer/Cook - and 0th level fish cleaner. Cooks produce quality food, which makes your dwarves happy. Booze, of course, is always required in high quantity and quality. Fish cleaning, on the other hand, doesn't increase quality or quantity.

Appraiser/Negotiator - 0th level Bookkeeper and Furnace Operator. Give this guy an office, and let him run himself up to legendary bookkeeper. Right around the time he finishes this, you should be setting up your (magma) smelter and beginning metal-working operations. This guy will most likely be your most agile dwarf when this happens, making him the best candidate to become the Furnace Operator, who has to have a very large throughput.

I train up immigrant peasants on Mining (ideally in soil, which is very fast, or in plain rock so you don't waste metal or gems), Engraving (smoothing only), and/or Siege Operating (catapults, which also get rid of excess stone) before putting them to work on other jobs. Soldiers wearing armor and carrying a shield also train up fairly rapidly, since they exercise 3 skills at the same time, but if they reach "Great" (level 11) in wrestling or any weapon skill, then they'll refuse to go back to civilian life. So, start them off in wrestling, then train them on a series of different weapons if you're using soldiering to make your dwarves strong, agile, and tough. In my experience, soldiers who have high skill in wrestling, shield use, and armor use very rarely kill each other. Just don't let vetrans spar with FNGs. (In short, train your military in batches. Run one batch up to a high level, convert them back to civilians, then start off another batch of peasants.)

[Forumsdwarf]

I used to recruit military from peasants, but now I pull them after they "graduate" to Legendary in a fast-training civilian occupation.  Agile and tough dwarves survive their training much better than weak teenagers.

Certain occupations like Broker are too important to let go of a really good one, and some like Armorer are difficult to train up.  Those posts I keep filled with the best.

Farmers, though, I'll take the ding to my economy to siphon off the Legendary ones and put them in the military.  I've discovered the secret of potash; my farms will be fine.

I disagree with multiplexing critical industries with less important ones.  If an industry is critical you want that industry pursued without distraction.  A fish cleaner can also fish, because you don't do much of either, but a woodcutter better darn well be outside cutting wood.  No battleaxe should ever be slung over a Fish Cleaner's shoulder -- it should always be hacking limbs, either off trees or goblins.  When do you ever not want more wood?

A Gem Cutter / Gem Engraver / Fisherdwarf / Fish Cleaner / Animal Trainer is the other side of the coin: some of those skills are critical, but none are all-consuming and none are time-sensitive.  You can group as many of those together as you like.

I only want one Gem Cutter, ever.  I want to focus the experience on the best Gem Cutter I have so I always get and will get the best possible gems.  But I don't care what else the GC does or if he fishes most of the time -- what gems I get from time to time aren't going anywhere.

Butcher is a tough one: when it needs to be done it needs to be done NOW, but until you get a large herd of cattle it doesn't need to be done often.  Rare, critical, time-sensitive tasks are the hardest to deal with, like getting your stupid broker to the trade depot.  Butcher you can mix with tanner and even leatherworker, since unless you're a bigtime rancher dependencies prevent leatherworking or tanning jobs from interrupting butchering jobs.  But mix in Plant Gathering and you're looking at a stinking miasma instead of a steak.

There's also the occasional dropping of critical tasks onto non-critical workers, which now that I think of it is your strategy after all, but I never count them as "core" to that task.  My woodburner will never, ever make potash, but I might flag the potash guy to burn wood until I have enough woodburners the potash guy can specialize.  I've found, though, that throwing a critical task onto your non-critical workers leaves you terribly short on haulers.

Finally, you can always toss Plant Gathering onto non-critical, non-time-sensitive professions, and when you see not much work needing done, toss a rectangle onto a patch of green.  I like this one because Plant Gathering guarantees 100% labor utilization so long as there are marked plants but is not critical at all -- diversifying your food supply is a luxury.

Whenever I assign a task I ask myself, "Do I ever want this person to not do this task?"  If the answer is, "No," that occupation gets an exclusive specialist.  There's no reason your Armorer shouldn't work the furnace in his spare time -- you can't make armor all the time anyway.  But your wood burner should never, ever be tasked with anything else, even if your potash maker also dabbles in woodburning.  Keeping charcoal and ash flowing is too important to ever let up.

I don't want to appear to be too harsh a critic of your strategy, here.  The closer you are to your "Starting 7" the more overlap there has to be.  I wouldn't dedicate 1 of only 7 exclusively to wood burning.  Wood cutting, though, absolutely.  We need all the wood we can get.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

The build I had above worked well enough on a forested, shrub heavy map to get me into the second year smoothly. I'm trying to revise my build for the next fort I build, which will be temperate, brook, with plenty of shrubs and trees in wilderness filled mountains. I'd appreciate some criticism before I embark.

• Jeweler: 5xGem Cutter, 5x Gem Crafter
  My Dwarves need their pretties and hordes. I won't budge on this guy.
  
• Smith: 2x Weaponsmith, 2x Armorsmith, 2x Furnace Operator, 2x Metal Crafter, 2x Metalsmith
  I haven't used smiths much yet, and they seem to arrive as immigrants. I'm not really excited about him, but I might as well experiment. My maps have been pretty calm so far, but I might need metal... Because I haven't been invaded yet, I could do without, and don't really see the need. I'll probably regret saying that, but right now I've got him only because I wouldn't know what to do with 1000 points from any anvil I might drop. Might as well have one on hand.
  
• Stoneworker (2):2x Miner, 2xStone Crafter, 2x Mechanic, 1x Building Designer, 3x Mason
  I'm staying with two identical stoneworkers- I won't accept anything other than a matched pair. That said, I'm willing to tweak the skills. Two proficient masons were overkill, so I've lowered it and distributed the points elsewhere.
  
• One Woodsdwarf: 2x Wood cutter, 3x Herbalist, 1xPotash Maker, 1xWood Burner
  Three skills left to buy. What to get?
  
• One Farmsdwarf: 4xCarpenter, 4xGrower, 1x Bowyer, 1x Woodcrafter
  
• One Barkeep: 2xBrewer, 2xCook, 1x Appraiser, 1xComedian, 1xConversationalist, 1x Judge of Intent, 1x Consoler
  I like the usefulness of George Darke in Shipwrecked, and I find lack of barrels and rotting due to lack of haulers more of a problem than any lack of speed in production, so I don't see a reason to boost brewer and cook. I easily end my first year with a hundred or two units of booze, and 20-40 cooked items (mostly biscuits made from the waste seeds of wild plants that I'll never farm) that I can add to when needed by cooking some booze. Who could be a more natural leader in a colony of alcoholic dwarves?

[Pyro93735]

The most notable thing I do is always make sure to bring along turtles, so that that way I'll get both bone and shells for strange moods. I can't begin to describe how many dwarves got mangled as a result of berserk shell-seeking dwarves in a fey mood.

[Hussell]

Forumsdwarf: I tend to start on maps with magma, and often few trees, so my skill choices are optimized for low wood availability. Which means I often don't do any wood burning at all, since I don't need fuel.

Fisherdwarf is an interesting profession because fishing takes priority over almost everything else. Without micromanagement, a fisherdwarf will spend all his time fishing. The exceptions I'm aware of are woodcutting and mining; fisherdwarves will stop fishing to execute these tasks. Since I'm often working on maps with few trees, my woodcutter is often waiting for new trees to grow. So woodcutter/fisherdwarf works well for me. It's also interesting to note that fisherdwarfs take a long time to train (they only gain experience when they catch something, which isn't very often), and highly skilled fisherdwarfs catch large stacks of fish instead of singles. So it's good to have a specialized fisherdwarf who does all your fishing, and therefore gains all the skill. (Having lots of fisherdwarves also quickly depletes the available fish, rendering them all useless.)

I completely agree that any skill that doesn't go up quickly should be restricted to one dwarf, so the specialist gains skill as quickly as possible. The ideal fortress would have seperate legendary dwarf specialists in every skill. Unfortunately, you only start with 7 dwarves, and you can't buy 10 levels in just one skill, so some multitasking is inevitable, at least in the beginning.

Plant Gathering is an easily trained skill. You can turn a peasant into a legendary herbalist in a relatively short time. The same goes for woodcutters: if you task a peasant to cut down a forest, he'll be legendary in no time. In fact, since wood cutters don't produce more wood as their skill increases, while herbalists produce bigger stacks of plants as their skill increases, I would say that a skilled herbalist is more valuable than a skilled wood cutter. But I would never spend valuable initial points on either profession, since it's so easy to train them from scratch. Spend your points on difficult to increase but useful skills.

Lazy Perfectionist: it's easy to train gem cutters and gem setters on rough green glass, which you can produce in infinite quantity. You'll also get them occasionally from moods. If you absolutely must start with a gem cutter and a gem setter, at least give the skills to different dwarfs so they can work in parallel.

Also, giving lots of skills to one dwarf is wasteful. Partly because immigrants often show up with level 2 skills, and partly because higher experience levels require more work to gain. E.g., 17 tasks to get to level 1, 20 more to get to level 2, 23 more to get to level 3, etc., so a dwarf with 5 level 2 skills in effect starts 50 tasks behind a dwarf with 2 level 5 skills. And how long does it take your level 2 furnace operator to smelt 50 bars of metal? Oh yeah, and: specialize! A level 5 Mason will out-produce 2 level 3 Masons.

[ January 15, 2008: Message edited by: Hussell ]

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Thanks for the feedback... I'm rereading posts in this thread and the linked one for further stuff.

Anyways, regarding my stoneworkers... It doesn't matter if one proficent mason produces more tables than two competent masons, as long as I get enough tables. I went with two masons because I build constructions like walls and floors outside a lot. We're talking working on the second floor by the end of the first year.

The big bottleneck there is getting stones to the production site, and two dwarves are better than one when it comes to that. I've played with a dedicated mason, and walls just don't go up fast enough for me. Stone blocks can speed things up, but doesn't work well enough in the first year.

That said, I've just learned why my dwarves were doing some funny stuff picking practically distant and hard to reach materials a few z-levels directly above my workshop over practically close materials on the same z-level, just six tiles away. Maybe I could use that one mason more effectively now.

Anyways, until I master the art of fortress design, and avoiding the unintended consequences of 3D placement of stockpiles, two is definetly better than one.

I actually didn't mean to suggest prickle berry surface farms. After a season or two, you'll find enough wild strawberries, and they're a better crop all around. They're the ones I plant on the surface with fertilizer, and even dabblers get me two or three plants to a stack. I send out a gatherer for a couple of seasons and harvest wild plants. I don't plant crops till fall or winter and get along fine, even without fishing or hunting. Of course, I make sure there are plenty of shrubs and not much to scare off my dwarves before I do this. I've been known to wall off an entire plateau, that works well if the landscape makes it feasible. I start by brewing everything but prickleberries. I then cook all my meat. With all the edible plants turned into booze, dwarves reliably eat the prickleberries. I then cook every single prickle berry seed whenever I have over twenty. If theres any other plants I'm not interested in growing, then I'll cook their seeds as well. This turns 40 whole prickleberries into 80 meals, eventually, and the rest of the plants produces a whole lot of booze, especially since I'm not waiting a few weeks between crops like I would with farming (and the herbalist levels up quicker). I don't set prickleberries to brewable because I want to ensure I have some food coming in, and it's the most common wild plant where I've embarked, and up until I finally get farming going, I have around a 5:1 ratio of booze to food. If I find myself going to low on food, then I'll simply cook some booze roast, but the prickleberries and prickleberry seed roasts provide a nice buffer if my chef decides to do something stupid.

If there are plenty of easily available and safe (no savage/haunted maps now) shrubs on the map, I avoid taking hunting and fishing. One of these days I'll have a great zoo. Until that time comes, I don't want to risk eradicating any species.

I don't want to bother with glassmaking until later. I'm good for the first year, but when it comes to second and third years, I'm still in the learning phase. I don't want too many things dividing my attention. Later I'll diversify, but other than my shipwrecked game, I'm taking simple locations and a fortress focus. The fortress after the next will be dedicated to weaving, dying, etc, but I'll ignore that as much as possible in this one.

Interesting about taking appraiser on two different dwarfs.
Forumsdwarf, interesting point about multiplexing, but I find it easier to maintain interest in the game if each dwarf has a related set of skills, than if my fortress is the utmost efficency. If I can't for the life of me imagine why my jeweler would dive into fish guts, he won't until he's forced to. Because of my low frame per seconds on interesting (river) maps, its important to make each dwarf as interesting as possible so I have a reason to make it through the long dwarven nap.

In the first couple of years, there aren't many !!critical!! professions, that is, jobs that need to be happening all the time. I often run out of room or stone for spare furniture, for example. So, my fortress tends to function in bursts, like... mining->furniture->hauling->mining->surface construction->stone crafts->mining. Whenever I get the stupid twenty immigrants, I take a long time before I figure out what I'm going to do with them, and have them do anything other than idle. Once I get more experience, I might form a master plan and reduce multiplexing, as you call it. I haven't gotten to a point where I'm regularly burning wood for anything other than potash. I might forge once in a while, but I'm focused more on exploring certain facets of the game than becoming a steel-industrial complex, or even 'finishing' a fortress.

That bit about chain of production... I see why you'd say that, and that's why I changed my farmer/woodworkers, but during the first year, my stoneworkers stay the way they are because they're focused in terms of projects, not production. When I get immigrants coming in, I might turn off stone crafting, or certain other tasks, but all the rest stays on because it makes it very easy for me to devote all my energy to each stage of a project. And the way I work when it comes to stone generates a LOT of hauling. If I have only two dwarves directly on the project, than it means I have five dwarves taking care of the rest of the fortress, and keeping stone flowing into stockpiles. If I have a seperate miner, mason, and mechanic in my first seven dwarves, then I'm theoretically 50% more productive, but I've only got 80% as many free dwarves, and things fall behind, food rots. I'm slowly learning some tricks and developing habits (in 3D, nonetheless) to help keep a ship shape fortress, but for now 'multiplexing' is a lot more efficent. I only begin stage two of a project when stage one is complete. Being ready for the next step before beginning it helps a lot. If you divy up all the skills, then you've got to manage multiple stages at once. You've got to remember to dig, make sure you've got enough stones, make sure you're queing up enough jobs, make sure the right materials are in the right place, all at the same time rather than one after the other. If you have to maintain control, its rather frusturating.

It's a strategy of maintaining control over the process rather than one of output or labor utilization. Except for a few cases, most of my dwarves do have all hauling enabled, and it (hauling) doesn't slow things down as much as divying up those tasks would.

"Do I want my mason not to be making doors?" Yes. But that's because of the step oriented process of completing a project I outlined above, rather than anything else. I do answer yes to the question several times, though. Just not when its related to an engineering/construction project.

My lack of smithing experience and projects may have to do with my wood surplus, but I rarely find myself short of wood or bins, even when I forget (all the time) to pay attention to my embark inventory. I started out always short of wood, but rarely run up against that any more (when I'm not in a challenge climate). I'm sure, once I stick with a fortress long enough to get barons and mandates, I may change my tune. But right now, I'm discarding fortresses when I stop learning from them- that is, when the minor mistakes pile up enough to make it worth starting over with the lessons learned.

Hussel: My previous build had maybe only one point in herbalism, enough to tell him what job to do without me having to go into preferences. As you said, that's more than enough for me to survive past winter and immigrants with the way the skill levels up, even with me putting farming off as late as I do. But I'm contemplating putting a few more points in because I note that even at expert, my dwarf can hit a few plants without finding something to bring back. Besides, I like herbalism a LOT more on safe maps than farming. My biggest stack of dwarven wine: 8. My biggest batch of wild strawberry wine: 13, probably started off as sixteen. My novice herbalist only reaches expert around a year later. If I start out effective earlier on, I can postpone farming even later, focusing my energies elsewhere. With large stacks of food coming in, I need less barrels, and have a lot more for my brewer/cook barkeep to do. Certaily, I could wait half a year, but I value a good herbalist more than I do a smith or a farmer on less than hostile maps, what with my surface wall obsession. One of the reasons I don't run out of wood is because of my herbalist. Certainly I might use up more barrels initially, but the fact that I have a leader with nothing but cooking and brewing to do changes the situation. When a caravan comes around, I have enough stone crafts and prepared meals to buy out all their barrels of meat, vegetables, booze, and seeds. I then cook most of this and free up the barrels quickly and easily.

I'm not going to deal with glass gems. My sites don't always have magma, and there's not much point in making it in the first year. I'm not ready to deal with the hassle of setting up another industry until I'm familiar with the ones I've got. I have trouble building an efficent fortress design (quickly enough to keep the rhesus monkeys out) even with fishing, butchery, hunting, etc taken out of the equation, thanks to the 3D. Setting up another chain of production will make it impossible for me to place things properly and effectively. Eventually, I'll be able to plan more complex fortresses from the start, but its best to experiment with limited factors, then expand my ambitions once I've learned my lessons.

[Hussell]

If you're going to concentrate on herbalism, then by all means take a proficient Herbalist! I don't think there's one build that's best for every strategy. Adapt your build to the starting location and the strategy you're comfortable with. Herbalism can be very efficient. Surface farming is nice because all surface plants grow year-round (an oversight which may be corrected eventually). I like underground farming mostly because it's easier to defend your fortress that way, and fishing because it's the easiest way to get an early supply of bones and shells (ignoring the turtles you bring with you).

Incidentally: 1 plant makes 5 booze (hence your 5:1 ratio). I doubt your largest stack of dwarven wine was 8. Your dwarven wine may disappear faster thanks to dwarven preferences. No dwarf initially starts with preferences for drinks made from surface plants, although I've seen them aquired after awhile.

You can't make wild species extinct, as far as I know. More always show up.

Re masonry and building walls, etc. Something weird is going on with that, I think. As far as I can tell, you need the Masonry labor enabled for dwarves to build walls, but they don't gain any experience in the Masonry skill as a result, and having high Masonry skill doesn't seem to speed things up. You should test this yourself to make sure, but I think you can put J. Random Dwarf on wall-building duty, and he'll go just as fast as a Proficient Mason. You can set a mason's workshop to allow only your actual mason to build there, so your unskilled wall-builders don't try to build doors.

You probably have more experience than I do building constructions, thanks to your herbalism and surface crops strategy. I don't usually get to big construction projects until I have lots of extra dwarfs for the stone hauling and wall assembly. We're all still learning how to assemble efficient 3D fortresses. Losing is fun!

Last, and least: Hussell, with 2 Ls. It's OK, everybody does that.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Hmm.. I'm curious... Got any suggestions for replacing the smith and anvil? Or you think I should keep him, even though I don't really use him?

[Bouchart]

I always dump the anvil and start out with the following:

1 Proficient Miner
1 Proficient Carpenter
1 Proficient Mason
1 Proficient Building Designer/Novice appraiser/novice judge of intent/2 other  
 noble skills
1 Proficient Stone Crafter

The other two will depend on my mood, chosen from fisherdwarf, grower, mechanic, ambusher+axedwarf.

[Hussell]

The only reason not to take the anvil would be if you were embarking to an extremely hostile location, and wanted to equip all your starting dwarves with steel armor and weapons. Either that or to bring lots of extremely expensive raw materials which don't need an anvil to be converted into trade goods. Giant cave spider silk thread, perhaps? I usually just take the anvil.

Whatever you do, don't buy 1000 points worth of food in place of the anvil. Food, as has been repeatedly pointed out, is easy.

The smith: other than the recommendation that you make him proficient in 2 skills rather than no label in 5, I haven't got much to tell you. You'll often get a no label metalcrafter in your first immigration wave. If you ever decide to make a military, you're going to need an armorsmith and a weaponsmith (or bowyer, if you go for marksdwarves).

One interesting start involves not taking any battleaxes (since you can only get them in steel, they're expensive), instead bringing 1 charcoal and enough bituminous coal, flux, and iron ore to set up a smelter and forge and make your own battleaxes. 1 charcoal, 3 bituminous coal, 2 calcite, and 2 magnetite will get you two battleaxes and leave you with one fuel left over. A steel battleaxe costs 300, but this stuff only costs 79 plus the time it takes you to forge your own battleaxes. You'll need a weaponsmith if you want high quality, and a furnace operator if you want it done quickly.