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[foenix phyre]

Ok, so my first forttress.   I have a farm, a barracks, a dining hall.  i have a carpentry, masonry and mechanics workshops. a trade depot.   dug deep enough to find stone to use.   Whats next for me?   

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Okay, first I want to make sure that you have set the farm to have plants in it in all four seasons (you could have different crops for each season if you wished, but that's not required in the game.).

Then build a crafts workshop and begin producing rock crafts. They are your first basic trade goods.

Also, you should create stockpiles: At least one food stockpile (subterranean, preferably) so that your food does not rot away and at least one stockpile for finished goods (=crafts).

Start producing bins and barrels at your carpentry. Basically, you never have enough of those, so don't worry about making too much. Do make at least 2 buckets as buckets are needed if any dwarf gets injured.

Barrels are needed for brewing drinks and they also increase how much food you can store in a stockpile.

Bins are used for all stockpiles except food (which uses barrels), furniture (no container), and stone (no container). If you have a finished goods stockpile and a bin, dwarves will put the bin in that stockpile and then put finished goods into the bin. This has (besides saving room) the big advantage that when you wish to trade things, you need to send them to the trade depot - if you have a bin, you just have that bin moved as a whole. Otherwise, you have to tell them to move every single item and they will carry them there one item at a time.

Also, build a still (under workshops). If you run low on drinks, set it to repeatedly brew drinks (once you have a lot of barrels and plants, simply have the still produce endlessly).

If you have a river in your embark location, deactivate fishing for all dwarves who have it (sorry, that will only get you into trouble).

If you have a brook or other water AND you have fisherdwarves, make a fishery. From time to time, set it to prepare raw fish on repeat as the fish caught by the fishers usually can't be consumed without getting treated first.

If you have animals around and a hunter, make a butchery and a tannery as soon as possible. You don't need to give them commands as they will automatically process any dead animals which are not pets, fish, or vermin. If you don't have them, you will lose precious resources (virtually all of them if you have no butchery, and the leather if you do not have a tannery).

Ah, also make a refuse stockpile, at first outside, I suggest, later inside with several doors between it and the rest of the fortress as it will be full of miasma which will give dwarves negative thoughts.

Also go to the orders and set dwarves to gather outside refuse.

Ah, once you have bones or shell in your refuse stockpile add "bone crafts" or "shell crafts" to your crafts workshops order. If you have a hunter and bones in the refuse stockpile, you can also make "bone bolts".

Well, I guess that should help getting you started.

Deathworks

[Proteus]

Craftsdwarf workshops are a must, after all you want to produce nice stonecrafts to sell to the caravan

Also food stockpiles and a kitchen (turning foodstuffs into meal makes them last almost indefinitely and also makes them a good trade good)

[Captain Xenon]

my own checklist:

hallways should be 2-wide. this wont matter until you hit 100 dwarves, at which point 2-wide is mildly cramped.

enough farms- i usualy build 8, 6 below ground and 2 in a walled garden above. i plant 2 fields of plump helmets, and 1 of each other underground crop to its own field, with dimple cups for winter in other fields. above, one field is for sunberries. the other is for hide root, blade weed, and rope reed(2 dyes and thread). generally 3 fields and a farmers workshop fit in one 11x11 room alongside a small seed stockpile. I find digging down a couple z-levels for the food stockpile works best, with the food workshops in small rooms to the side of the stockpile(still/kitchen/fish/butcher/tanner/crafts) a statue in the walled garden helps some dwarves get some sun and slow down cave adaption.
 
at least 3 craftdwarf stations, one of them by the butcher/tanner refuse stockpile for the bones and skills. set 2 of them to crafting rock all the time, the 3rd for bone bolts.

the Lever Room- for me, this is an 11x11 room with statue, kennels, and animal cages. colored levers go left and right of the statue. the constant meeting area/party status of the statue keeps idle dwarves near levers for emergencies. also, the animals will be there most of the time.

the cistern. This is a 11x11 room 3 floors deep, top floor above the brook, 2nd equal with it (the flood level), bottom below it. floor the cistern with rough road if theres any chance of finding a cave river/pool(to prevent trees clogging it), and channel the higher 2 floors to be open on 2 sides. i get that room filled as soon as i can, and inside it i place: fishing/drinking zone, well, millstone+waterwheel, and the jail cages (very close to water source, less time walking to bring them water). later on, the cistern expands to the main entrance dwarf-wash once i know where to put the drain (usualy takes a few years to set up- save first it likes to flood).

the Main Shaft- this is a 2x2 stair from the farm level straight down to the bottom. i keep it near the food and water, but away from the main entrance. on the bottom level i put the tombs. 2 levels above the tombs i put nobility (usualy a 3 z-level block). 2 levels above nobility, i put the regular rooms, and start on getting the mayor/sherriff rooms ready as soon as i can. the regular dwarf rooms spread out from there. The dining hall and shops i put just below the farming/food level. the deeper the mountain goes, the further the rooms are from the workshops. you want to sleep a good distance away from the noise of the shops, and noise travels up and down a long way.

and the entrance... should be a sadistic deathtrap for siege, yet capable of defending with raised bridges over pits to keep the depot safe. reserve an area underground for the depot and its defense. you cant do it year 1 or even 2, but later on it matters. only move the depot in winter.

aside from all that, it comes down to restricting goblin ambush pathfinding to traps, and making them trip the traps as far out as you can. getting magma workshops up is a good thing to work on if its available, but make sure to use nickle bars to keep the imps out.

good luck, and remember- the leading cause of dwarficide is lack of beer! you need a few hundred more barrels (and make some bins if you want to trade when the merchants come, to haul your crafts in).