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[kurisukun]

Forbid at least 2 of every kind of item.

Raw gems, Bones, metal bars, Shells, Cloth (Silk and Plant), shells, bones, etc.

You will be thankful that you didn't accidentally make all your cloth into bags when your weaponsmith starts asking for cloth as a fey mood item.

It may be worth forbidding 3, depending on the item type.

[RebelZhouYuWu]

Hunting isn't as good becuase most of the time bucthers will ignore the butcher requests until after the animal's corspe has rotted away, basically making the butchery a mamisa dispenser.

[kurisukun]

While your beggining dwarves will vary, depending on what you have in plan for your fortress, your starting dwarves should look like this:

2 miners (just upgrade up to "miner"  on both.)
1 woodcutter (Upgrade to woodcutter)
1 Mason (upgrade to mason)
1 Carpenter (upgrade to carpenter)
2 farmers (upgrde to Grower on both.  1 of them should also have Brewing. Herablism/Cooking is optional)

One of them (Woodcutter or Carpenter) Should be the appraiser, recordkeeper/whatever.   The record keeper/organizer should be set to some dwarf who doesn't have anything to do once you get Migrants.  Keep your broker, as raising the appraiser skill can be very difficult in smaller fortresses that are not looking at/trading a large number of goods.

Farming is one of the easiest things to get started right away.  Just dig out an underground area, build a farm plot (it doesn't even require any materials)  And your farmers can get started producing foood!!! (don't forget a plant stockpile)


The wiki is your friend. Read the Wiki.

[Gamerofthegame]

 My bit.

 On a map with a river or constant water of any sort, don't mess with water until later. However, if it has something that dries up make a reservoir as soon as you can. That water might save your life, or someone else's rather.

 You should only put a priority on Magma if you have the ability to make glass with it. If so, it should be one of your first things.

 Bring a cage. Just one. You can use it to stuff your excess creatures. Mainly anything outside two cats and maybe two dogs.

 You might want to bring along a rope, too, and then wall in your fortress entrance so there is only one path. Then set a dog on the rope (Not a cat, those are more useful against vermin) beside the door to stop the sneaky sorts.

 If you have spare skill points, up your building designer. While it might seem silly, that boost from having masterwork buildings can go along way. Whatever way you do it, once you get a high skill enough to have masterworks at a good rate build supports and buildings, rebuilding ones that aren't masterworked. The slow down due to the lack of that workshop/whatever being there is minimal being that it is fairly quick to get it back up, and the worker as well as others will get a happiness boost. Good stuff.

 When you have your engraver fellow get to work, first smooth everything. Everything. Smoothing doesn't have any masterwork/quality chances and gives the engraver experience. Plus you need to smooth to engrave. Thus tis only good things coming from waiting.

[pavlov]

1 steel battle axe (optional - don't bother if you have no trees)
1 copper pick (optional esp. if all above-ground)
2 dogs (if you are a coward)

No skills.

Why do you need anything else?

[Hyndis]

I start out with 4 builders (mining, masonry, architecture, mechanics, stone detailing), 1 farmer, 1 craftsdwarf, and 1 trader.

The builders dig out the fort and work stone help build the defenses. The farmer provides food and booze. The craftsdwarf builds beds, bins, barrels, and crafts of various kinds. The trader also works as my book keeper and manager. When there's no work to be done at the moment he functions as a very good hauler, being perfectly agile after working on the books for so long.

All work is done via immigrants, such as metal working and whatnot.

However, due to my not liking micromanagment, I assign immigrants into just a few "castes."

The craftsdwarves do all crafts as well as carpentry, crossbow making, and wood cutting. No need to bring axes at the very start, they can pick up axes as they're produced.

Farmers (+furnace operating) are the basic peons of the fortress. They collect herbs, plant, harvest, make booze, cook, do all the dirty work in the smelters, and haul on the off season. All peasants are given the farming jobs upon arrival.

Metal workers at the only dwarves that keep their specialized profession, since its often so difficult to get a legendary metal worker of any job. Also, I will only have 1 metal worker of each type, so a maximum of 4 per fort. The lesser skilled ones are sent into the military, allowing the single dwarf of each skill to max out their abilities.

The original 4 builders keep a monopoly on their professions. All immigrant masons, stone detailers, miners, and mechanics go into the military.

[RebelZhouYuWu]

1 steel battle axe (optional - don't bother if you have no trees)
1 copper pick (optional esp. if all above-ground)
2 dogs (if you are a coward)

No skills.

Why do you need anything else?

Don't forget the 146 cats you need to bring with those extra points you have.

[Hyndis]

Don't forget the 146 cats you need to bring with those extra points you have.

Dogs are better than cats. Dogs breed just as fast and you can have an army of wardogs slaughtering everything, not to mention they make an incredible thief defense. Simply put a meeting zone across the entrance to your fort, then you'll have all eleventy billion dogs wandering around in that meeting zone. Any thief is instantly turned into kobold kibble, and they're quite handly at dealing with smaller sieges too.

Also you can slaughter dogs at whim, whereas you can't slaughter an owned pet.

[RebelZhouYuWu]

Dogs are better than cats. Dogs breed just as fast and you can have an army of wardogs slaughtering everything, not to mention they make an incredible thief defense. Simply put a meeting zone across the entrance to your fort, then you'll have all eleventy billion dogs wandering around in that meeting zone. Any thief is instantly turned into kobold kibble, and they're quite handly at dealing with smaller sieges too.

Also you can slaughter dogs at whim, whereas you can't slaughter an owned pet.

Only 10-20 percent of cats ever get adopted, also cats turn your fortress into a masima farm, warding off attackers, and also it is funnier to get mualed by cats then to get mauled by dogs.

[Ashery]

Dogs: Bring'em. Yes, they start breeding and overpopulation is a possible "problem," but they aren't like cats in the sense that they choose their owner and become unbutcherable.

If you have magma, bring at least six bauxite for 2x floodgates, 1x grate, 3x mechanisms.

I typically bring 4-5x picks. Yes, it seems excessive, but until I get farms setup, both of my farmers help mining. My smith is in the same situation.

I second bringing extra flux/coal/iron if you expect your map to lack it.

Skills (Note that the map is currently woodless):
Growing/4Cook/1Armor (For possible moods)
Growing/4Brewer/1Weapon
3Miner/1Appraiser/1JoI/GemSetter
Miner/SiegeEngineer
Carpenter/Mechanic
Mason/BuildingDesign
Armorsmith/Weaponsmith

[Yanlin]

Slow down with the contradictions... I hate deciding who's correct...

[Lord Dullard]

Slow down with the contradictions... I hate deciding who's correct...

Well, there is no one 'correct' way to start, so contradictions are pretty inevitable. There are however different ways to start which best suit different peoples' playing styles.

If I embark somewhere with little/no trees I usually bring along the anvil right away so that I can start making metal barrels when I hit a few veins of copper, lead, or another cheap metal. The best way to do this is to bring along the anvil, three bituminous coal, three non-economic stones of any kind, and 2-5 copper bars depending on how many dwarves you want mining. This way you can construct your smelter, wood furnace, and metalsmith's forge, burn the wood from your wagon, convert the coal to fuel, and make copper picks right away.

[Ashery]

Slow down with the contradictions... I hate deciding who's correct...

Well, there is no one 'correct' way to start, so contradictions are pretty inevitable. There are however different ways to start which best suit different peoples' playing styles.

If I embark somewhere with little/no trees I usually bring along the anvil right away so that I can start making metal barrels when I hit a few veins of copper, lead, or another cheap metal. The best way to do this is to bring along the anvil, three bituminous coal, three non-economic stones of any kind, and 2-5 copper bars depending on how many dwarves you want mining. This way you can construct your smelter, wood furnace, and metalsmith's forge, burn the wood from your wagon, convert the coal to fuel, and make copper picks right away.

Or you could bring five picks and 300logs

[motorbitch]

for magma, you will only need one iron bar for a vertikal bar to lock out magma man. dont build flood gates, you wonnt want to open them up ever, so a simple wall will do the trick and a wall is always fire save.
you can replace the bars with a fortification, than you wont need anything but 2 roks.

[Ashery]

for magma, you will only need one iron bar for a vertikal bar to lock out magma man. dont build flood gates, you wonnt want to open them up ever, so a simple wall will do the trick and a wall is always fire save.
you can replace the bars with a fortification, than you wont need anything but 2 roks.

Bauxite is a hell of a lot cheaper than iron.

And why wouldn't you not build a floodgate for magma? This simple precaution helps to minimize the damage any mining accident would cause.