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[Salkryn]

I'm looking for a more challenging embark (from an outside danger standpoint), and I'm considering doing an embark with a tower nearby. I've had bad luck attempting this in the past, as it seems the tower will send a wave of undead before the first year is even out, compared to other invaders/beasts, who have a wealth or time requirement. This frequently ends with the abrupt and horrible end to my fort. Does anyone have any pointers on how to survive a tower embark?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Lock yourself in. They'll go away in, at most, a year.
My last lot stayed slightly over a year for some reason which isn't supposed to happen. I guess they were enjoying the regular influx of visitor brains.

Cage traps work too.

[anewaname]

Against undead, you can lock yourself in using a regular door or floorhatch since they normally do not arrive with building destroyers.

[PatrikLundell]

As anewaname said, a simple door or hatch installed before summer is all that's needed to save the fortress. If they do show up, you may then have to dig quickly for the caverns if you have grazers you want to keep alive (such as sheep for a mood wool supply) to release spores. It's also a good idea to bring most of the embark gear inside and make sure you have enough wood inside (in particular if you've got an aquifer to pierce). Note that buildings made out of wood can be dismantled to retrieve the logs.

[Grand Sage]

the undestroyable head/body part bug makes playing with the undead... unpleasant.

[PatrikLundell]

True. I catch the undead in cages, though, so they don't get split into different pieces in the first place, and get caught in the traps anyway.
However, the head part bug keeps me from playing in reanimating biomes.

[steel jackal]

look for an embark that has an ore of silver, off the top of my head tetrahedrite, galena, and of course native silver.

silver can be used to make maces, and maces are wonderful at killing the undead as they are likely to pulp them to death, and a pulped corpse is a corpse that will STAY dead

i would work on getting military, smithing, farming, and hospital setup as fast as possible.
ive had ambushes of zombies occur before i even got to fall, so defense is a high priority.

i really like tower embarks, they are tough enough to be !!FUN!! but not so tough that the fun surrounds you upon embark and the instant you unpause everybody dies because monsters were literally right next to your wagon (ive had bad experiences with evil embarks)

[Snafu]

the undestroyable head/body part bug makes playing with the undead... unpleasant.

Isn't that bug fixed in 43.05? Alternatively, as mentioned, (heavy) maces tend to keep the undead down permanently

[anewaname]

Head/neck skin/scale/hair is still a problem (e.g. butcher a crundle, the "crundle scale" animates, cut the head off that, and the animated "crundle head scale" is unkillable.

[Salkryn]

Head/neck skin/scale/hair is still a problem (e.g. butcher a crundle, the "crundle scale" animates, cut the head off that, and the animated "crundle head scale" is unkillable.

I seem to recall hearing about this. Can the unkillable part cause physical damage, or does it simply rampage around causing job cancellations and scaring dwarves, and can it be captured with cage traps? These are important things to know before I embark, I think. Also, a more general question: how strong a military would you suggest for being able to fight off an undead invasion? It seems like bladed weapons and marksdwarves are contraindicated for zombie duty, so I'd have to make a special squad or squads of hammer and mace users.

[PatrikLundell]

Head parts usually do not inflict any damage: they kill dorfs by engaging them until the dorfs die from dehydration, and it's hard, and not always possible, to disengage.
Head parts (like any other normal undead [excluding e.g. reanimated kobolds]) can be caught in cage traps or atom smashed (not reanimated ogres: they're too large).
Slicing undead to pieces works well unless you happen to have an active necromancer against you. I've never had any, since all mine have tried to sneak into the fortress and then gotten caught in cage traps, or fled as the number of undead caught in cage has reached reasonable levels.
Piercing damage is mostly useless against undead, though.

[anewaname]

If you are embarking near a tower, you only have to worry about what the necromancer can see and animate. If you are in an animating biome, there are many things that become very dangerous when they die.

The greatest risk to dwarfs fighting hand-to-hand with common undead (animated by necromancer or biome) is that dwarfs suffer from exertion and pain and that undead do not.

Do not get too hung up on the value of silver maces verse steel axes. Neither will help if the undead is big. A water buffalo is about 16 times the size of a dwarf. If a necromancer's army kills your water buffalo and animates it, you have a problem that maces and axes will not solve.

Your dwarfs will engage and they will be doing well, swinging and chipping bones, bruising muscle, and denting things. They will be blocking shots with shields and dodging. Then they will start getting tired and the undead will score a hit, the dwarf falls over as something explodes in gore, that dwarf dies, and the other dwarfs are still just chipping bones, but they are starting to get tired. No matter what people say about maces and mangling, if the undead is large, it will kill dwarfs, because you can hit an undead water buffalo in the head with a mace and it just bruises it.

In an animating biome, use cage trap choke points in your fort to handle random things, like old age pet deaths. So if you have an up/down staircase running through your fort, at every level, you should have a chokepoint with cage traps. A few hatchcovers is helpful too. The butchers area should be enclosed with cage trap chokepoints, and should be in a separate burrow so it can be removed during a civ alert, then if there are a dozen dwarfs fighting the llama wool that is tickling them, they will run away when the civ alert is triggered. Even the exhausted dwarfs will eventually get up and get out without being hurt by the wool.

[steel jackal]

it's hard, and not always possible, to disengage.

dwarves will stop fighting and run away if you assign them to a burrow away from where the enemy is. civilians at least, never tried it with military

[anewaname]

With military, they will run away if their squad position is not on scheduled orders. I had a military squad training in the butchers area in case something dead got uppity, and when they fought an unkillable thing, I'd toggle that squad from Active/Training to Inactive.

[Salkryn]

I've embarked in a savage desert biome near a tower, but I'm well into the second year with no trace of them. My exterior is thoroughly trapped, with my corpse and refuse stockpiles quarantined from the rest of the base a couple z layers down. It's difficult to tell if I'm properly prepared, but I'm feeling fairly confident.

EDIT: Welp, I was not prepared. It took nearly three years for the necromancer to make themselves known, but when they did they came with about a hundred zombies, and the zombies were armed and armored.