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[Deathworks]

Hi!

First of all, don't sleep. When you move on the big map, you will heal damage instantly and also thirst and hunger will be gone and not re-appear.

Secondly, drunks more or less fell prey to the recent improvements. Basically, if someone has a proper job, they will not be drunks, and the new world gen makes sure that most people have proper jobs -> few drunks.

As for others joining you, I am not sure but I think it is because you are weaker than them. Many villagers have spent years fighting and so on, and they are high-level whatnot. The cheat suggested also implies that it is a strength issue.

For successful adventuring, your setup isn't bad. As was suggested before, drop throwing. It is not really needed and actually amounts to cheating currently.

Do keep swimming (either Novice or Swimmer) - you will be grateful when that wolf knocks you into that pool of 7/7 water.

First thing after startup should be setting your combat options. I suggest setting attack to 'strike' and normal dodging to 'stand ground'. Leave charge dodging at 'depending on foe'.

During combat, simply strike normally with your weapon. If the sword gets stuck, move back a tile to get it out. If you lose possession of it, you need to grab it with your swordhand in wrestling and then move back again. If you end up 'on the ground', stand up immediately (only move if someone is blocking you from standing up).

Wrestling is used when you grab your weapon in such a situation. In addition, the skill is also responsible for dodging attacks. So, it is not a wasted investment.

Like all rogue-likes, this game is relatively tough. So, I suggest that you first train with smaller fry. If you gen a lot of large caves in your world, I guess you should have plenty of cave denizens to play with. And if something shows up telling you to "Prepare to Die", at least in the beginning, run away ASAP.

Only once you are really confident in your skills in combat should you try to do a quest monster.

Well, at least these are my experiences/thoughts.

Deathworks

[Exasperation]

I personally recommend setting both normal and charge dodging to dodge away when you're starting a new adventurer.  I find that it vastly reduces the odds of getting knocked prone, and not being prone makes you more likely to survive.  Just don't get in a fight next to a hundred foot cliff.

[Neoskel]

Important rule when fighting wolves at early 'levels': Don't let them gang up on you. Lead them in a line and weave between trees, then you can kill them one at a time. This is great for dwarves since theres a good chance you'll enter a battle trance while leading the wolves and can go back and utterly splatter them.

Don't add throwing or ambushing points at startup, these skills are easily trained. Swimmer is good, Novice Swimmer will cause you to drown if knocked into water and novice wrestler is ok to start with. I always use this model for skills:

Proficient Melee Weapon (typically axe or sword for me)
Skilled Shield User
Competent Armor User
Novice Wrestler
Swimmer

This lets you spawn with the best equipment available to your civ. First train up throwing by finding a spot with rocks/dirt/sand and preferably a tree or wall to throw at. The only reason for the tree/wall is to shorten the path of the thrown rock/dirt so it doesn't take a long time. Throw until you reach legendary (or pass out from exaustion). If you get over exerted, 'T'ravel a worldmap square and come back.

When training swimming, do it in a place that doesn't get freezing at night or you'll get encased in ice and killed instantly. The ocean is actually a great place to train a beginning swimmer as it often has ramps and will never freeze. It's useful to train ambushing at the same time. Be careful though, getting hungry, thirsty or tired will drop your effective swim skill, so don't let that happen or choose a place with ramps to the shore.

Ambushing can be trained by 'S'neaking and just doing something else. Sneak to find the entrance to a cave. Sneak to search the cave. Sneak to explore the town. Don't sneak when looking for mobile civ/local leaders for quests as they'll often walk right past you since you're moving so slow. Don't stop at legendary ambusher, keep going until you sneak at the same speed you walk normally.

If you can find a place with zombies, go there (without companions). When you get ambushed by say, a zombie cougar, put down your weapon and strangle it until you get legendary wrestling and armor use. If you've already trained other skills you should be tough enough not to get too exhausted from this.

To train shield use quickly, collect a number of shields and 'r'emove them one at a time from your backpack. You'll now be holding all your shields. Put away your weapon and find a pack of wolves. Use 's' to lie prone in front of them. You'll get to legendary very quickly, with nary a scratch.

The best way to train up weapon skills is to find a savage region. There will be tons of predator ambushes in such an area. If you already have good stats in other fields and good equipment, this should be cake.

When looking for starter quests, go to the human towns. That will save you tons of headaches. Once you're appreciably agile you can try and find druids and dwarf leaders. You can even get quests from goblin leaders, who are a little easier to find. Temple leaders don't actually give quests, they'll just recruit you into their religion. This doesn't affect anything, except that you can 'talk' to that particular god.

Once you've trained ANY skill to legendary, pretty much any warrior will join you, as long as they are not a guard/leader. There's a bit of a maximum group size but it seems to be controlled by your skill levels.

Of note: If you have really high strength and no throwing skill, you can still insta kill things with thrown dirt/rocks and send them flying. It's loads of laughs.

[Haven]

Hm... You can train up from Novice to regular Swimmer in the first pool you come across, if you feel like saving the 6 points for something.

[Jay]

1. Create an adventurer, keeping in mind not to use up all the stat points. Keep around 10-20 uninvested.

 2. Retire in a town near the cave of misery. Go back to step 1 x10

 3. Create your real adventurer, using all of your points.

 4. Recruit them if you can find them.

 5. Assault cave.

 6.

 7. Either death or glory!

Too much cheating for me.

That's not cheating.
That's game mechanics.
Adventurers can recruit anybody who has any ability in a combat skill (greater then 1 EXP, basically) that also has less of it then they do.
If you consider that cheating..  Well, by extension, you consider pretty much any of the effective ways to go about Adventure Mode successfully cheating.

[Yanlin]

1. Create an adventurer, keeping in mind not to use up all the stat points. Keep around 10-20 uninvested.

 2. Retire in a town near the cave of misery. Go back to step 1 x10

 3. Create your real adventurer, using all of your points.

 4. Recruit them if you can find them.

 5. Assault cave.

 6.

 7. Either death or glory!

Too much cheating for me.

That's not cheating.
That's game mechanics.
Adventurers can recruit anybody who has any ability in a combat skill (greater then 1 EXP, basically) that also has less of it then they do.
If you consider that cheating..  Well, by extension, you consider pretty much any of the effective ways to go about Adventure Mode successfully cheating.

Nah, I decapitate random people on the street by throwing coins in real life too.

[K4tz]

I'm not sure you can really go wrong with decent axe proficiency and one or two companions to take blows for you. Nothing short of a particularly strong megabeast should be able to kill you >_>

[Yanlin]

So as a summery.

Just get a proficient melee weapon skill. Preferably a sword/axe/hammer

Try to have at least competent in armor and shield and maybe wrestler.

Novice swimming so you could train it up in the first 7 deep pool you find instead of looking for a 4 or less deep pool.

Try to go to a dwarf fortress and kill a few wolves on the way. If you survive, you might be able to recruit some dwarfs. Look around and try every dwarf you find.

Then you should be able to kill a few giants and cyclops.

Savescum at your own discretion.

You just correctly started adventurer mode.

I made the answer thread to this. Hopefully it will be useful for future people puzzled by this.

Rather than reading through this they should read through a few lines and get all that info. If it needs improving I'll be watching it for replies. But not here. Thanks in advance and remember, assume good faith.

[hexrei]

Quick question, what do i have to do to get the world i am currently playing in DF  mode into adventure mode? do I have to abandon the fortress? because when i try to start a new adventure game I only see world i'm not currently playing in the list.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

You are absolutely correct. There can only be one active game per world, either one fortress or one adventurer.

If you don't want to abandon your fortress completely, make a copy the save directory it is in and abandon only the copied version. Then, you can have your adventurer explore the old version while you can still expand the living fortress.

Deathworks

[hexrei]

thanks!

[LumenPlacidum]

I get a lot of mileage out of:

<no descriptor> Weapon-skill (11 points)
Expert Shield User (68 points)
<no descriptor> Armor User (11 points)
Novice Swimmer (5 points)

[Dougy]

I start off with "Expert Axeman," "Shield User," "Armor User" and "Novice Swimmer."  My tips:

1. Pick up _many_ rocks.  (key combination "g b" is easier if you can find a spot where the bth position is rocks)  Throw them at the ground until legendary.  (key combination "t h enter" is easiest for me)  You can press 'z' to check.  I managed to do this in 5 minutes.

Yes, #1 has been mentioned before, but it's probably the most important thing you can do at the start.  Your strength/agility/toughness would have increased drastically.

2. Set combat preferences 'c a' to "close combat."  Find some animal enemies and lie on the ground 's'.  Let them attack you, i.e. press and hold '5'.  If in danger, switch your combat preferences back to "according to opponent" stand up and kill them.  Otherwise, after a while wrestle your opponent(s) to death.  Repeat this until you are legendary in the "shield user," "armor user" and "wrestler" skills.

- train ambushing (all you have to do is 's'neak)
- get plate mail (eg. get a companion killed and sell his stuff)

At this point your char will almost be invincible.

[Deon]

I usually recruit companions in human cities. Warriors visit Mead Hall pretty often, also combat leaders give you quests so these places are the best. I'd just suggest you to train up your skills a bit, or those warriors will consider that they are better than you.
Also throwing skill can be trained by throwing objects on the tile you stand on so that's pretty fast.

[Granite26]

Too much cheating for me.

Then don't spend points on them at all (Or just enough to get weapons)