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[Sutremaine]

d-x is "remove designation"; it only cancels incomplete designations, not buildings/constructions.

d-n is "remove construction"; it only deconstructs completed constructions.

Incomplete constructions need to be canceled in the q menu with x : remove building.

Ah, whoops. Little rusty on the keypresses when not actually playing. d-n is the one I meant.

when I esced back to the game the yellow Xs are still there and there are 5 of them on 5 of the six stair cases and it won’t let me select anything it blinks and then disappears but doesn’t delete the stairs and now the Xs won’t go away

Not sure what you're trying to communicate here, but what are those stairs made of?

[Shonai_Dweller]

I’m looking forward to the so called “Murderous tantrums” it’s just annoying to have to start over because of stairs you know

Ah, the countless times I spent destroying worlds and generating new ones whenever I got the stairs in the wrong place. Happy, innocent days... 

Murderous tantrums are kind of rare these days. But bar fights resulting in lethal injuries aren't. So that's something. And there's a stress tweak on the way too which will no doubt swing the balance hilariously back too far in the Fun direction.

[Quickpawmaud]

Also I heard that cats keep the dwarves as pets how does that work

[el Indio]

Also I heard that cats keep the dwarves as pets how does that work

Dwarves can adopt animals as pets, except cats who adopt dwarves.  It's just a bit of fun that makes no difference to the dwarf/pet relationship.

[mikekchar]

"Losing is Fun" is the motto of the game and for people who want to "do it right", it's a bit hard to get used to.  I remember when I was digging a moat and by Legendary miner decided to mine the ground beneath himself with hilarious consequences.  I had to shut the game off for days.  But I eventually came to appreciate the chaos and randomness of making mistakes -- it *does* make the game more fun.  I keep screwing up ramps (because they are complicated) and my dwarfs will get stuck at the bottom on the mine, dying of thirst because the ramp is not connected to anything above.

DF is actually a *really* easy game once you learn how it works.  People call it difficult, but in reality the difficulty is the stuff you are experiencing now.  The game is unfinished.  There are place holders everywhere.  The UI is insanely confusing in some places and is unlikely to get any improvement until sometime around 2030.  There are weird, wonderful things that happen and you aren't quite sure if it's supposed to work like that or if it's a bug.

IMHO DF is best played with a kind of insane narrative inside your head.  7 intrepid dwarfs set out to create their fortune.  But they can't figure out how to make stairs.  WTF.  OK, they went down, but they can't come back up?  They're getting thristy!  And they die.  Their bones are left on the first level.  Another 7 dwarfs reclaim the fortress only to be attacked by some suspiciously powerful capybaras (essentially big guinea pigs).  And they die.  It's OK.  The game grants you infinite dwarfs -- and *there is no way to win*.  The latter bit is important.

It *is* a puzzle.  Anytime you see the phrase SCIENCE! in the forum (i.e. everywhere) it's because nobody knows how the damn thing works and somebody is going through with trial and error to figure it out.  Even the author is unlikely to know how it works.  That's the charm of this game.  You could spend your life reading spoilers, practicing "to get good" or as Shonai_Dweller says, you can just play the game.  "How the hell does this thing work.  What?  I killed a dwarf AGAIN?  Really, there should be a warning on those bridges."  *That's* the game :-)

When you are frustrated and you think "I suck at this game, how could *anyone* understand it", remember that *this* is what makes you a good DF player.  Because you know *there has to be a way to do this, dammit*!  And you go back and you kill off 40 more dwarfs and figure out how to do it.  In cycling they say that it never gets any easier -- you just get faster.  In DF, it never gets any easier, you just kill things in more grandiose ways.

[Iapetus]

I was planning to do hours of research and planing before playing normally I studied the world creation stuff in the game to figure out the best way to create a single world that works for both fortress and adventure

That sounds like a recipe for confusion and frustration.

Much better to start with a small world and just play, without expecting to achieve anything grand.

Get the hang of digging out your fortress, building ramps and stairs etc without killing yourself, providing food, etc.  Use the wiki (or this forum) for advice on dealing with specific problems as you come to them.

You'll probably fail the first time (either fatally, or just messing things up in such away that that makes continuing too boring/frustrating to bother with).  Don't worry.  Just abandon your fortress and embark again.  Repeat until you get the hang of things.    Then either set yourself an objective or challenge (big fortress, interesting construction, dangerous embark, etc) or have a go at adventure mode.

Eventually you will find it all comes easily (and you'll dream in ASCII).  And maybe you'll load up one of your early fortresses and look at and facepalm at the newbish design you were using (in my case, single-tile main corridors, workshops in the bedrooms, and "defenses" consisting of fortifications at ground level carved in the wall separating the dining room from outside).