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[Pexxithan]

I'm just wondering what a lot of people load up on before they embark.

Personally I usually go with the following:

2 Miners
1 Woodcutter/Woodworker
1 Mason/Engraver/Architect
1 Grower/Herbalist
1 Wood/Stone/Bonecrafter
1 Marksdwarf

3 Copper Picks
1 Steel Battle Axe
150 Assorted booze
25 Plump Helmet Spawn
25 Pig Tail Seeds
25 Rock Nuts
75 Plump Helmets
50 Turtle (or 25 Cave Lobster)
1 Copper Crossbow
1-5 Steel Bolts
5-10 Bauxite
5-10 Cave Spider Silk Thread
5-10 Deer Leather
20+ Tower-Cap Logs

2-4 War Dogs
1 Cat


Of course things also vary based on what is available or the biome I embark to. What do other people do?

[jellyman]

My last game I started with 0 skills and 0 items.  Took a while to get going but got there eventually.

I tend to focus on the skills I want, maxing each dwarf.  Five points in wrestler so they are much more likely to survive, and 5 points into one skill.  I tend to prefer skills that are harder to level up and are useful in the long term as basic survival at the start is easy and you don't really need much skill for a dwarf to start a job.  The exception being mining because I hate digging out any square with a non legendary miner if I'll lose an ore or gem.

A somewhat balanced mix is:  miner, mason and carpenter to get a good start, rock crafter to help get rid of rocks and build weatlh quick to attract migrants, and jeweller, armor smith and weapon smith to use later in the game.

Maybe next time I will look up the wiki on how to make cheese and pick starting skills to support a great cheese making industry.

[Crushy]

I usually bring a Mechanic and
1 Miner/mason
1 Carpenter/woodcutter
1 Planter

and an assortment of other useful skill depending on the environment. I've been bringing along a trader/administrator recently and a pair of brewer/weaponsmith and cook/armorsmith. Craftskills are trained easily enough and I get a legendary jeweler sooner or later through moods.

I've noticed you guys don't bring mechanics. Is there a trick to training them? I've recently lost my only 2 and the peasants are training rather slowly. Should I just spam mechanisms?

[Deathworks]

Hello!

First, I drop the anvil. Then I drop plump helmet spawn and any other subterranean seeds as I do surface farming.

Each dwarf gets either novice mining or novice wood working. The dwarf I want to become bookkeeper gets novice in the required skill and I also give appropriate social skills to the broker and the expedition leader/manager (the latter somewhat based on her personality). Besides that, the dwarves get a variety of novice skills in an attempt to have each civilian skill at least once.

4 picks
4 battle axes (because I often forget whether I have 4 miners or 4 woodcutters (^_^;; )
3 kittens
and the rest of points goes into food and drink

I don't take any seed (not even surface ones) with me, but rather start by designating some plant gathering early on and then simply designate farming for whatever my dwarves find.

Okay, a simple approach, but it works fine for me.

Deathworks

[umiman]

1 miner/engraver
1 woodcutter/woodworker
1 mason/building designer
1 weaponsmith/armorsmith
1 metalsmith/metal crafter
1 brewer/cook
1 mechanic

2 dogs
1 cat

Drop one pick and one axe and change meat for turtles. Then max out the plant. I'm too lazy to care about extra barrels if I select every single edible thing in the list.

I just pick the skills that suck early on but improve tremendously as time progresses. So, I kinda skip the "suck early on" part.

[Hyndis]

4 "builders"  mining1, masonry5, building design1, mechanics2
1 farmer
1 craftsdorf, including carpentry
1 clerk


5 picks, 1 anvil, 1 axe, rest of the points in food in addition to the usual food/drink loadout.

[Nilus]

Miner/mason
Miner/architect
Miner/mechanic
Woodcutter/carpenter
Grower/brewer

Now for the rest, it depends on the area.
If it's safe to hunt I'll bring:
Cook/Butcher
Ambusher/marksdwarf

If it's dangerous, I'll bring:
Cook/brewer/planter
Leader guy

Then also the needed items for everyone.

[TantiaTope]

1 miner/stonecrafter
1 mason/engraver
1 woodcutter/carpenter
1 armorsmith/bonecarver
1 architect/mechanic/judgeofintent/recordkeeper/appraiser/organizer
1 grower/cook
1 grower/brewer

1 anvil
26 dwarven wine
26 dwarven ale
26 dwarven rum
26 dwarven beer
31 plump helmet spawn
31 pig tails
4 granite (or any other cheap stone)
1 copper bar
1 iron bar
1 each of every 2PT meat/fish
11 turtles
2 wardogs

I spend the remaining points on bituminous coal (if I know that the map has flux+magma) or tower-cap wood (if the map has sparse or none trees) or extra turtles.

- The miner/stonecrafter gets all the jobs disabled except mining and he starts mining only stone non-stop until Legendary. Then, he proceeds to mine any metal/gems I've found.
- The mason/engraver produces all the basic furniture for 7 dwarves (doors, cabinets, coffers, 1 chair, 1 armor stand), and then he starts churning out blocks until Legendary.
- The woodcuter/carpenter deconstructs the wagon and then is set to depopulate the area of trees, and produce beds, bins and barrels on demand.
- The armorsmith/bonecarver turns two of the wagon's three logs into charcoal and the copper and iron bar into a copper pick and an iron battleaxe. Then he just hauls or turns turtle bones/shells into crafts until I can set up a magma forge to produce a few sets of plate for my future military.
- The architect/mechanic hauls, deals with traders and produces the occasional mechanism, until I need a full-time record-keeper. This guy is usually elected mayor.
- The two growers keep the population fed with raw/roast plump helmets and dwarven wine.

The starting alcohol and food normally lasts until the population has doubled. By then, I can start planting the pig tails to feed a textile industry.
I don't bother with rock nuts until I have produced at least 100 pig tail bags to handle all my seeds/leaves.

[Brian]

I've been trying the 'play now' (or whatever) crew for a bit.  It seems to work out nicely.  I know the anvil + axe + pick is a little much, but I feel like I'm too likely to get pissed off after accidentally embarking before I'm ready 5 or 6 times in a row.

[Neoskel]

I have a bad habit of only brining novice miners and whatever supplies are appropriate for the site i'm going to. I'll then activate every labour on them except woodcutting, hunting and fishing (and the ones i won't use depending on the area. I'll activate one of the miners for woodcutting when i need some wood.)

I like to imagine they're some sort of breakaway 'communist' group tired of being downtrodden miners or a group of mining apprentices chosen at random to build a fortress by the mad royalty.

[Awayfarer]

2 Miner/stoneworkers
2 Woodcutters/Woodcrafters
2 Fisherdwarves/Brewers
1 Jeweler/administrator

I give a point or two in architecture to the miners and/or woodcutters. The woodcutters and fisherdwarves may also recieve a point or two in herbalism or bonecarving. The jeweler gets to be a novice gem cutter/setter. I often allow engraving in his labor options despite his lack of skill. Engravers are easy to skill up.

90% of the time I ditch the anvil and buy...
2 crossbows (In case I want to do some hunting)
2 sets of bolts
lots more booze
lots more meat
some turtles

[ChJees]

Dorfs
1 Miner/Trader
1 Miner/Mason
1 Woodcutter/Carpenter
1 Mechanic/Architect
1 Grower/Thresher (Plant Gathering is useless)
1 Brewer/Cook
1 Weaponsmith/Armorer OR Woodcutter/Carpenter (For Aquifer Maps)

Items
1 Anvil
1 Copper bar
1 Charcoal bar
26 Booze Type 1
26 Booze Type 2
52 Turtles
2 Copper Picks
26 Plump Helmet spawns
26 Sweet Pod seeds
2 Cats
2 Dogs OR As many as i can get

[pushy]

Dwarves
Proficient Miner/Novice Judge of Intent/Novice Appraiser/Novice Organizer/Novice Record Keeper (Expedition Leader by default)
Proficient Miner
Proficient Grower
Proficient Grower
Proficient Wood Crafter/Proficient Bone Carver
Proficient Gem Cutter/Proficient Gem Setter
Proficient Glassmaker

Pets
Dog x5
Cat x1

Goods
Anvil x1
Dwarven Beer x21
Dwarven Rum x21
Dwarven Ale x21
Dwarven Wine x1 (otherwise I'd forget to pop in and make sure dwarves don't cook with it )
Plump Helmets x50
Bauxite x4 (or any cheap stone if bauxite is unavailable)
Copper Bars x3 (1 for an axe, 2 for picks)
Dog Leather x8 (or any other cheap leather. Turned into bags for the glassmaker)
Any food worth 2-8 x1 (for both food and barrels)
Turtle +(5+X) (to make the remaining points into a number ending in 0)
Other foods worth 2 +5 (until all points are used up)

Some of you may notice that the dwarves setup is quite blatantly abusing the bug with ammo encrusting...thing is that my setup wouldn't be all that different even if that gets fixed - I'd instead replace proficient woodcrafting with proficient stonecrafting and have the dwarf make silly stone trinkets instead of wooden bolts.
You'll probably also notice the distinct lack of a dwarf skilled in common things like masonry, carpentry or mechanics...I set ALL dwarves to do these tasks (and several others as well). Lack of speed by an individual doesn't bother me in the slightest when the collective unit can be so damn fast (especially once some migrants have come in to help with larger projects) and item quality is of little/no concern for the most part...

[Sularus]

1 miner/wrestler
1 engraver/wrestler
1 mason/archetect
1 woodcutter/axdwarf
1 carpetner/mechanic
1 planter/weaponsmith
1 brewer/armorsmith

1 pick
1 ax
60 alcohol
50 turtles
50+ logs
50+ bitmuscoal if its avaliable.
40 of every seed type.

thats assuming i'm not going for the outcast loosers game play.

[d3c0y2]

miner/mason
miner/judge of intent/appraiser
carpenter/woodcutter
architect/mechanic
farmer/brewer
farmer/cook
stonecrafter/fisher dwarf

4 picks (2 spares)
steel axe
30 x meat
30 x meat2
30 x meat3
30 xmeat4
30 x meat5
21  x wine
21 x ale
21 x rum
21 x beer
20 x ph spawn
10 x cave wheet
10 x rock nuts
40x tower cap
4 x rope

the little bit left goes into picking items dependent on the area im settling in