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[Yanlin]

I no longer keep the guide here. I moved it over to the wiki for ease of use.

http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/How_to_correctly_start_fortress_mode

[Flok Speargrabber]

Bring about 10 of each seed, you don't need two axes but you do need those two picks, a great setup is social, trees, miner miner, blacksmith, goods, and farming...

Also, embarking with 1 of a meat will grant you an extra barrel per 1.
Ex:
1 Goose meat - 1 barrel to hold it
1 bear meat - 1 barrel to hold it
This net gain is 2 meat and 2 barrels at a cost of 4 points. If you just buy extra of one meat, you might miss out on the barrels.
Considering that you can get meat for 2 points each, this is a good way to get extra barrels with your food.

TURTLESSSSS

Dogs are not worth it - They start repopulating and oh god my FPS

Six 5x5 fields will feed many.

Brew often!
Make barrels often!

Wood is useful for:
- Beds
- Bins
- Barrels
- Spikes
- Pump parts
- Windmills and water wheels

Stone is good for:
- Statues
- Coffers
- Cabinets
- Coffins
- Trade goods
- Doors
- Floodgates
- Chairs
- Tables
- Statues (Cheaper though)
- Blocks for roads and floors (More brick-y than block-y)

Metal is good for:
- Weapons
- Armor
- Coins
- Magma-safe pumps
- Expensive statues
- Noble orders, usually, unless they don't want a special metal item

Nobility demands:
Nobles are cunts. They'll mandate you to make something out of something you've likely never seen before. If you have it, make it to shut them up. If you don't, hope a caravan brings the metal you need and stripsearch the ground.
A good way to avoid this is look at each noble's preferences and pre-emptively order lots of those kinds of metals

[HisMajestyBOB]

To avoid FPS problems with animals, pause the second you see the "X has given birth to kittens/puppies", and mark the newborns as Ready to Slaughter in the Animals view. Check your conscious at the door.

[Flok Speargrabber]

But you might be flooded with messages when such a thing happens.

Remember kids, the best way to prevent pets is to never have any!

[blakyoshi7]

Fishing is the kind of thing useless immigrants are for. A lot of my immigrants tend to end up as fishers or farmers.

Also, you can deal with dogs by training every single one as a war dog and chain it up at your fortress entrance.

If you get any hunters as immigrants, consider drafting them- they come with fighting skills and weapons!

[moocowmoo]

To avoid FPS problems with animals, pause the second you see the "X has given birth to kittens/puppies", and mark the newborns as Ready to Slaughter in the Animals view. Check your conscious at the door.

That's what I do after I get a good amount of war dogs, just start butchering any puppies. Free meat, leather and bones, and if you need more dogs just let them grow.

[Proteus]

I disagree that dogs arenīt worth it.

They are a good source of meat.
You just pay 16 bucks for them upon embark, if I remember correctly.
This might be a little bit more than the price of 5 meat (which is 10 bucks)
but you have to take into account that they get offspring, son that 20 dogs of the first year might turn into 30 dogs or more in the second year.

And when you slaughter them each dog gives you 5 meat, 5 bones, a hide and a skull. This as well as the fact that dogs, in contrast to meat donīt rot, makes it useful to buy at least some of them upon start  

[Vaftrudner]

Cats. DO NOT DO IT! IT IS NOT WORTH IT!

...

Cloth. Pig tails can give you all the cloth you need.

I have to disagree with some of this, and add some comments. I always bring cats. Why? Because they're terribly effective vermin killers, and since a lot of dwarves like cats and are absolutely terrified of some vermin, they're cheap happiness. With the new partial print feature, low FPS from cats is not as big a concern as it used to be, and it only takes a tiny bit of attention to slaughter all unwanted kittens. Plus, free meat, leather sacks and bone bolts for everyone. This catphobia has gotten a bit out of hand

And generally, I find that I don't need to plant any pig tails at all. Merchants bring more than enough cloth to keep 200 dwarves out of rags, and it's quite cheap aswell.

[Yanlin]

Thanks for your advice so far guys.

[Jude]

Don't bring dimple cup or pig tail seeds. They don't yield food and if you want a cloth or dye industry, you can import the seeds later.

Most important skills are mining, stonecrafting (ASAP get a dwarf on nothing but stonecrafting so you'll be ready to buy what you need from the caravan and have at least one appraiser and judge of intent. Also bring plenty of picks so many dwarves can mine at once; steel axes are nice for double duty on woodcutting and monster-killing but they're expensive.

[Jude]

Of course, this neglects that the true "correct" way to start fortress mode is to embark, start digging in, get attacked by hippos and all your dwarves die.

[Overdose]

I don't agree with the fisherdwarf statement, 1 fisherdwarf is a good compliment to any map with a decent amount of water (with exception to rivers which get dwarfs killed). Particularly if you have an aquifer on said map, you can make an indoor fishery that produces upwards of 100 turtles or more a year with just a small one (you could make many of them or large ones if need be), and as we all know, turtles = food+free bones/shells.

having an unlimited supply of bone bolts, shells for those moods, plus a food supplement isn't that bad at all.

Bringing more then 4 of each type of seed is usually a waste, since through brewing/processing or raw consumption, you'll easily start having overwhelming numbers of seeds.

Hunting isn't worth it unless you have dangerous animals lurking about, in which case the hunter is only providing security for your woodcutters and such. I'd treat them more like a patrolling watchman then for a food source.

Also, contrary to Jude saying, pig tails are good to bring, as a source of booze that your dwarfs won't accidentally eat up before it's turned into it's sweet elixir of happiness

(i agree, the correct way is to die a horrible death early on from whatever can kill you, bonus points for weak creatures such as groundhogs, or having the wagon appear 2 spaces from a megabeast)

[Yanlin]

This thread has just reached wall-o-text status. Good work guys.

[motorbitch]

Jude says:

Don't bring ... pig tail seeds.

i disagree. pig tails are grate to make booze. good booze. different booze. will prevent your dwarfs from saying : getting annoyed from the same old booze all the time

Security. Stonefall traps at the entrance help.

i dissagree.
altrough stonefall traps are the most easy traps to build, they will cause lots of rearm jobs.
spiked balls are by far the most devastating trap weapons. they have 3 hits with 1 critical each. 3 of them made of wood will savely kill any crature with organs and with a verry high chance creatures without organs, like bronce colossi.  in the rare case a mega beast survives, he will be utterly crippeld by the 3x3 hits.

Cloth. Pig tails can give you all the cloth you need.

i disagree. you will need NO cloth exept for moods, and these can be imported.
why not need any? because worn off clothes are buggy and can not be dumped. as they will decay verry slowly (like within 100 jears) they will get checked every frame, killing your fps seriously.
dwarfs are absolutely happy when walking around nude. so i wuld suggest a nudist camp.

Metal is good for:
...
- Coins

i disagree. coins are good for nothing, exept trowing munition for adventurers.


i miss:

---betumous coal.
you will want to bring in as much as possible.
 put in any spare points you have over after buying skills, booze and food.
even if you have magma, you will need the coal to make steel, and if you have sand, your logs will proberbly all be turned into ash.
usualy i end with 100-150 pices of them, thats like 300-450 bars of steel: enugh for ever if you have gold, enugh for a long time if you have to make your furniture out of steel, too.

---two-humped camels

REALY worht it. size of 10 will make staks of 50 bone bolts. not bad. also much fat.. .mhhh fat! and they can be milked. verry good over-all performance, and if the population is keeped small, only a verry low fps hit.



i wuld suggest in general :

never ever collect body parts.
these will spawn single bones, with will be turned into staks of 5 bolts: not even woth the way to the stockpile.
for the same reason i wuld not suggest to butcher cats, kittys or puppys:
to small bonestaks that need to be dumped.

[Flok Speargrabber]

Pfft, 2 spaces? That's nothing.

On one of my first games, I spawned near 2 open vents. Not bad, of course. But guess WHAT

Ruins!

AND a cave!

...With the cave on top of the ruins!

That caravan lasted a minute. The dwarves fled and basically ate plants off the ground as the monsters fought each other.