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[Yanlin]

What should I do? I don't have weapons production set up because I couldn't get an anvil from the caravan and I didn't find a whole lot of iron...

Some of them got jobs that I could use but... My fortress was designed with 10 migrants being added in mind. Instead I got 18.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Setup surface farms and gather plants (provided you have natural vegetation).

Give out several jobs to your immigrants, including very often plant gathering.

Set up another still and go for major drink production.

This should occupy your dwarves and provide you with something useful.

Deathworks

[Untelligent]

Just make them whatever job your fortress is lacking in at the moment. Example:



Kivish the Migrant: "Hello there, kinsman. I hail from the Mountainhomes and humbly bestow upon your village my services as a Cheese Ma-"

Mayor Moldath: "Engraver."

Kivish: "What? No, I'm a-"

Moldath: "Nope. According to your immigration papers, it appears you've been an engraver all your life."

Kivish: "But-"

Moldath: "Here's your chisel." *directs Kivish towards the noble quarters*



It helps if you give them a custom profession and use Dwarf Foreman to organize them.

[Ametsala]

Make them engrave, operate (unconnected) screw pumps (and gather plants). After they've got some stats recruit them, give them any kind of armor & shield and stand then down so they'll start sparring and getting some exp in wrestling, armor using & shield using. When they've got some skill in wrestling give them a weapon so they'll start training with that.

[Proteus]

In my games every migrant with jobs not regularly needed (or not needed at all) or without any education, gets all the jobs that normally donīt have the skill affecting the quality of the end product (like mining (or woodcutting), butchery, plant processing and -gathering, fish cleaning and so on.

A lot of migrants also get jobs as masons (+architects) and engravers. Although these jobs have parts where the skill level affects the quality of their work, there is normally enough work out there to ensure a steady growth of their skill level.
(I also have special masonry (and other) workshops for beginners, where they can train their skill level by creating lots of items where the skill level doesnīt matter (rock blocks for example, or doors for unimportant parts of the fortress), whereas my "normal" masonry workshops only accept people with skill level of competent and above.
   

[Ametsala]

Unskilled miners are less likely to produce stone/ore/gem when they mine out a square resulting in lots of nice floors but little stone, ore or gems.
So having a lot of unskilled miners is quite problematic if you wan't to mine for something special (gems/ores/obsidian/etc).

[Untelligent]

Not only that, but they take a helluva lot longer to mine, which is problematic when you want to mine huge rooms.

[Eita]

Indeed. Just use them as woodcutters instead. Not even a dwarf can screw that up.

[Untelligent]

Bombrek, Woodcutter cancels Chop Wood: interrupted by Carp.

Bombrek, Woodcutter has drowned.

[Proteus]

Not only that, but they take a helluva lot longer to mine, which is problematic when you want to mine huge rooms.

Which however is no problem if you have lots of them
One skilled miner might mine 5 tiles in the timne of an unskilled miner,
but 10 unskilled miners mine double the amount of one skilled miner.
And they donīt leave rocks everywhere.

Of course, as Ametsala pointed out, you might have to be careful and cancel dig designations for precious stones if you have unskilled miners around,
but that is no big problem (and the skills of unskilled miners grow very fast to acceptable levels if they have enough work to do [I do the same with the embarking dwarves, only my leader gets a skill level in mining of 3 or 4, but I bring 6 picks with me, so that 5 other unskilled members of the party can also be involved in mining; the result is that by aumtumn, when the dwarven caravan arrives most of them have levels of 6 or even 7 in mining, far surpassing the maximum level that you can give an embarking miner {which is 5}])

[Axe27]

What you could do is heard the ones you don't need into a room, lock the door, and open up a floodgate with a river behind it. Just remember to drain the water afterward.

[NTheGreat]

I normally just turn most migrants into odd job dwarves, who mainly deal with all the haling that needs to be done. It also means I can turn off haling on all my important dwarves as well, so Urist McStoneMason doesn't stop what I want him to do to haul a sock to the stockpile.

Of course, drafting them all and sparing them with your champions also works.

[DJ]

What you could do is heard the ones you don't need into a room, lock the door, and open up a floodgate with a river behind it. Just remember to drain the water afterward.

Why waste perfectly good cannon fodder?

[Deathworks]

Hi!

As you can see, there are very different approaches to the game.

Anyhow, I wanted to point out something neglected in some of the recent posts:

If you do give those dwarves regular tasks like masonry, they will gain experience, getting tougher and faster, and as they become proficient in what they are doing, they will become more useful. The peasant/cheesemaker/... of today is your legendary miner/grower/crafter of tomorrow.

This way, you can broaden your work force making you independant of that one legendary craftsdwarf. After all, disaster can happen any time and you will need dwarves who can step in if your important dwarves get incapacitated for one reason or another.

At least, this is the way I see it and why I try to keep my immigrants usefully occupied (if anything, once I have enough legendaries, I try to have only them do the hauling since they are faster and they don't need the extra experience so dearly).

Deathworks

[Teeto_K]

Yeah. And don't underestimate the power of a Fey Mood. I've had a dorf come to the fort as a peasant, make one Stone-craft, go fet the moment he became dabbling, and create a Magnetite Hatch Cover menacing with spikes of Magnetite and an image of Dorfs in Magnetite, resulting in a new source of income, and a sexy adornment for my dining hall.