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[Dareon Clearwater]

One of my very first fortresses started on the side of a volcano.  I apparently missed the message telling me there was a cave there, too.

Code: [Select]

** Starting New Outpost **
You have located ¥ikusu Ziltazabip, "Caughthollows the Amazing Stigma", a cave.
M”rul Idilral, Farmer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Job item misplaced.
Obok Ingishsholid, Mechanic cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Job item misplaced.
Sibrek EsdorŠrith, Woodworker cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Obok Ingishsholid, Mechanic cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Job item misplaced.
Mebzuth Zimakrul, Cook cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
M”rul Idilral, Farmer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Mebzuth Zimakrul, Cook cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
The Stray bull (Tame) has been struck down.
The Stray dog (Tame) has been struck down.
Mebzuth Zimakrul, Cook cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
The Stray dog (Tame) has been struck down.
Sibrek EsdorŠrith, Woodworker cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
M”rul Idilral, Farmer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Mebzuth Zimakrul, Cook has died in the heat.
The Stray cow (Tame) has died in the heat.
Obok Ingishsholid, Mechanic cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Sibrek EsdorŠrith, Woodworker cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Obok Ingishsholid, Mechanic cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
M”rul Idilral, Farmer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Obok Ingishsholid, Mechanic cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Sibrek EsdorŠrith, Woodworker cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Obok Ingishsholid, Mechanic cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
The Stray horse (Tame) has been struck down.
Sibrek EsdorŠrith, Woodworker cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Dumed Shetbˆthat¡r, Fishery Worker cancels Fish: Interrupted by dragon.
The Stray cat (Tame) has bled to death.
Dumed Shetbˆthat¡r, Fishery Worker cancels Fish: Interrupted by dragon.
M”rul Idilral, Farmer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Dumed Shetbˆthat¡r, Fishery Worker cancels Fish: Interrupted by dragon.
Dumed Shetbˆthat¡r, Fishery Worker has died in the heat.
Onol Mafoladas, Miner cancels Dig: Interrupted by dragon.
M”rul Idilral, Farmer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
x2
Obok Ingishsholid, Mechanic cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by dragon.
Onol Mafoladas, Miner cancels Dig: Interrupted by giant rat.
** Starting New Outpost **
Before I had even got dug in and the wagon unloaded.

[Makrond]

Wow...

My roughest start consisted of 6 wolves and a carp-infested river.

I tend to be able to find most (sometimes all, on my current seed) of the necessary resources without embarking in a dangerous environment.

[Aqizzar]

I started a fortress on a one-tile volcano - it had everything, water, magma, flux, chasms, and sand in 5x5.  I was like, "Oh man, I'm gonna make the most super-duper fortress ever!"

Embark.  You have located Somethingorother Gobbledygook, "Orbgates the Anonymous Hole of Janking", a cave.  I think, "Well, that's a new one.  Even better then.  I can nab some cave creatures and have the best zoo in the world."  I check the unit list for significant residents and find a Cyclops chilling out in the very bottom level of the cave network.  Surely he won't even notice a few dwarves milling about six stories above.

Apparently, Cyclopes make up for depth perception with super-hearing, geo-vibration sense, and bad temperment.  As soon as I unpause, he marches right the fuck of his winding pit and yells at my poor, optimistic dwarves to get off his lawn.  I draft everybody, assign dogs, and order the attack.

Five real time minutes of watching a one-eyed hillbilly kick lawn gnomes later, the farmer is hiding in a crevice two screens away, the horribly mangled smith is praying for death in his brief moments of consciousness, and Mr. Cyclops is dragging himself around the map trying to nab the remaining kitten, with nothing to show for the fight but a weeze.


For some reason, it still doesn't compare to embarking on a haunted glacier, spawning right on a skeletal polar bear who ate the entire party one by one.

[RogerN]

My most unsuccessful fort ever:

Immediately upon embarking, my dwarves discovered a Kobold cave.  The entrance to the cave was about one screen away from the wagon.  If that wasn't bad enough, we were also parked about one screen below a magma pipe.  Within the first five minutes, both of my miners were roasted by a fire imp as they came up to get a drink.  Shortly thereafter, the Kobolds decided to attack with about a dozen archers.  One dwarf managed to survive the Kobold attack, only to be gobbled up by a Giant Cave Spider which I hadn't noticed before.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I embarked in the mountains. You have found a cave! I was right next to a cliff, and a swath of thick trees were right next to me. I traced the edges and found that I was on a plateau with a 15-tile wide rocky slope to the south as the only map exit. Sweeet.

The cave was on the other side of the cliff, which separated the map in half. No way for the named flashing titan to get through, even though he was sunning himself on the surface. Again, sweet.

On the west side, a magma pipe was exposed to the surface by a little tunnel, it was immediately below ground level and unicorns frolicked outside.

To the north, far above and out of reach, mountain goats were being slaughtered wholesale by a GCS. I had plans for this one.

So first thing's first, set up my forge and wood burner so I can make my 7 picks and 3 axes. I remove the workshops when I'm done and have seven 5-point miners striking the earth.

Soon after: a kobold thief has stolen your pig tail rope. Oh well, that was the rope I was planning on using for my well. I can trade for another one.

Soon after: a kobold thief has stolen your anvil! Dang!

It was about now I realized that the unicorns were standing pretty much outside my cave. I think they were carving their names into my turtle barrels with their horns. So what do my dwarves do? They run outside to shake hands and get something to snack on.

COME GET IT BOYS

But the unicorns did nothing. They just stood around. It was surreal. I had seven dirty dwarves sitting around cracking open their turtles and eating with their hands amid of a whole herd of unicorns.

Then suddenly someone snapped. It could have been anything. But the dwarves were picking the unicorns and the unicorns were stabbing the dwarves. The herd fled back to the magma pipe and I was left with seven injured dwarves.

Oh nice, immigrants. As I recall, two peasants and two pump operators. But at least they can mine with both arms!

Later I got a possessed mood that needed bones, realized all my bones had disappeared because they were outside, and gazed longingly at the hundreds of mountain goat bones still gathering from the ongoing GCS slaughter. I sent in a peasant miner who blocked himself in with a wall before breaching the GCS plateau. Wasn't necessary, as the GCS was busy killing elsewhere. He got the bones inside, walled the exit back up, and dug out his wall. Yay, got some bones!

So my possessed mood creates a stone scepter with bone stuff or something, completely useless. Value: a couple thousand monies.

I mined to the titan and invited him in.

[pushy]

I once started right beside a magma pipe and decided that the best place to dig in on the map would be on the other side of the pipe. Set up a food stockpile just outside where I wanted to dig, as usual, and the dwarves began happily walking back and forth taking food from the wagon to the stockpile...then a fire man decided to come have some fun. It started chasing a couple of dwarves away, and I saw that they were about to be cornered by it, so I drafted everyone to go and fight it. 3 died before it went down. The four survivors were then killed minutes later when the fire imps came up to see what all the commotion was about. Bugger...

[Drolias Flamegut]

My most favorite rough start was my first start ever, where I learned a few things very quickly:

1. Why are my dwarves flashing blue like that?
2. Oh, brooks freeze in the winter, don't they?
3. Oh, we're gonna need to brew something to drink and fast, aren't we?
4. Oops.  Too late.

By the time I got around to learning the intricacies of plant gathering and brewing, I had four of my original seven die of thirst.  Surrounded by all the death, the mechanic went berserk and killed all our pets before he ran out of the fortress into the woods.  I watched him wander around chasing after woodland critters, punching them in the face or something.  The mason apparently missed the mechanic bigtime because she fell into melancholy and eventually died, leaving only the brewer to finish brewing the remainder of the plants and hang out with all the hooch.

Spring came around and lo, here come the elven traders.  Berserk Mechanic came back as the wagons were approaching and attacked them, sending them fleeing (course, seeing as how I knew very little then, I would've offended them anyway once I tried to trade.)  Berserk Mechanic dropped dead of thirst as he wandered back into the fortress to find something else to punch.

Then came my first wave of immigrants.  How wonderful for them it must have been to be welcomed by the sole survivor, sitting on her barrels of booze, waving a hearty welcome and telling everybody to get cleaning already, cause there's a lot of work to do.

That's when I knew DF was a very special treat.

[Techhead]

Accidentally dug into an aquifer once.
All my dwarves were trapped indoors under floor hatches holding back the water. And the water blocked the entrance. And my miners all drowned with their picks.
I also cant seem to convince them to suicide via deconstructing the floor-hatches.
Apparently, they have to deconstruct the hatches from above, and whenever they try to do so, they open the hatch, cancel the job due to dangerous terrain, and the hatch closes. So I ended up with puddles under the only exit.
Do dwarves still eventually suffocate in air pockets?

[Jualin]

I had just started, and I was greeted by the sight of two small hordes, one made of troggys, the other of gremlins. They were less than a page away from my seven dwarves and my (thankfully) large amount of dogs.

I decided, "Hey, the dogs will hold them off. In the meantime, I'll dig myself a passage into the rock to my left, and hopefully escape any harm to my dwarves!"
I couldn't have been asking for it more than if I'd thought, "Hey, life sucks, but it can't get much worse, can it?"

Right on queue, a dog gets caught up in a web, and then along came Mister Spider. Mister Spider just happened to be in the neighborhood, and he liked dogs for their crunchiness and raw texture.

I immediately activated all my dwarves into the military, which brought my military might up to a shit load of dogs, plus 1 woodcutter, 2 miners, and 4 wrestlers. Things got dicey after that. I couldn't be certain, but it seemed that my dogs were living up to their full potential as meat shields, soaking up damage like puppy-shaped sponges.

Certain I was doomed, but too raptured in this spectacle to turn away, I watched as many more died, including a few gremlins and troggys. By some miracle, the Giant Cave Spider was slain. My dogs were down to around 5, and I had only 1-2 functional dwarves, and at least 1 dying dwarf.

Also, I noticed that a rather large percentage of the troggys and gremlins had decided on a short tactical retreat to the right. They waited hungrily. I made a tactical retreat of my own shortly after.

My shortest-lived fort to date. Didn't even manage to mine a single tile.

[Jace_the_slasher]

I once started in a terrifying wasteland and got killed in 4 seconds by 12 Ogres.  Most of that was my fault.

[Zara]

By some miracle, the Giant Cave Spider was slain.

I actually found that it isn't that hard to kill GCSs. I usually embark with one  woodcutter (4)/ herbalist (4)/ Axedwarf (2), and on  a map with a GCS lurking on the surface. He managed to run unto the net, but then he actually killed the GCS. Didn't help him, though, because he was then killed by a nearby Troglyte. I restarted the map anyway, because I wanted to capture the GCS. At the next try the first wave of immigrants arrives on the other side of the chasm. I though: oh well, they're doomed, because they had to walk though a bunch of mobs to reach my fortress. But the casualties were within limits. Only two immigrants died because the ranger, who had come with them, decided to be a hero. He beat the troglytes  with his crossbow after he ran out of ammo and actually became a hammerdwarf. 

[Mephansteras]

Well, I can't beat any of the stories of GCS and Dragons munching everyone, but I do remember an early fort that really depressed me to have fail. I'd started on a pretty nice map. Limestone cliffs with tons of gems, iron, and platinum. Plus some malachite or something. Anyway, it seemed idea. I'd have more wealth then I'd ever had before (this was...fort #4 I think?) and I'd actually get a really good fort going.

And this time...this time I was smart! I avoided embarking next to a river so I didn't have to worry about fish eating all my dwarves!

Except, well, it was a warm map, and I had water source after the ponds all dried up. I literally had farmers dying of thirst that winter as they walked out to the fields to harvest bushes for plants to brew. I was so sad. But I learned to always have a brook, if possible. And if not, to dig a reservoir so that my water doesn't all evaporate.

[Slartibartfast]

I think the roughest start I had was in the 2D version, way back when I started. This was before the update that toned down [feature] invaders.
I started my lovely fortress in a nice and quite site, I had enough time to dig my dwarves nice rooms, and reach the river so I can start working on floodgates and levers. As is always with the starting dwarves, they all fell asleep at the same time, all retired to their lovely little rooms (quite spacey ones too, If I'm not misremembering, they each had 3x3 rooms.).
At the same time, a squad of snakemen rose out of the river, I think there were five of them. They snuck quietly into each dwarf's room, and slew them in their sleep, one by one.
None of them woke up. Ever.

[tp12]

i started between wolves and some carp once... didnt take long for my dwarves to decide that hugging the cute carps was the best way to go.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

My roughest start was when I embarked in the wrong place.
Instead of a merely cold mountain-and-hills biome, I embarked to a desolate glacier.
I mean desolate.
There was nothing but ice and a few tiles of granite, scoured clean by the ice,
With heavy hearts, my dwarves dug their own graves.
The last dwarf I drafted to stand guard over his own coffin as a final, poignant act.