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[Marlowe]

I just started my 8th fortress. My 7th was actually going fine, but I was bored, was not getting enough goblins or interesting wildlife, and wanted to fool around with magma for the first time.

So..we just started our third spring. Population 67 and createdwealth is at about 250,000. Fire Imps, after scaring me horribly by running all around the map in the first few months, have chosen to hide at the bottom of the volcano after my peasant (not even a hunter at the time) bashed one to death with his larch crossbow. We've got iron ore and aluminum and a trickle of copper. There's 5 complete suits of iron plate mail in the storehouse and 6 more on various soldiers, and a collection of Obsidian shortswords in case anyone needs a shave. It's good to not have to worry about fuel for your furnaces. I'm even starting a glass industry so I can have more of that chop wood-burn wood tedium back. Yessir, things are going swimmingly.

But...I have some questions.

Number one, there's three biomes on this map, but I can't remember the precise specs. Is there any way to view the site information once you've started playing?

Number two, related to number one. One of the Biomes is an Evil lakeshore at the southwest of the local area. I can't remember if it's sinisterorhaunted, but I'm pretty sure it's one of those. It was one of the reasons I chose the site. I wanted some danger in the area. I was bored with deer, foxes, and wolves. So what's in the lake? Rainbow Trout and Yellow Bullfish. Where's the skeletal piranha and zombie clams? Some Lake of Evil.

Number three. I've actually tapped into this lake to fill a cistern for my fortress, but it's taking forever to fill. Granted that the channel goes over half-way across the map, but I broke into the lake a good 12 game-hours ago and the cistern (relatively small) is still only half-full. Barely enough for my dwarves to use the well.

Number four. It only occurred to me after doing this that I couldn't remember if it was a fresh-water lake or not. Would the game tell me if it was salt-water?

Number five. Framerate. At the beginning of the second year framerate dropped very noticebly. It's been getting slowly better since. I'm informed that large water areas and magma slow down framerate, but those things were on the map from the start. I can't recall anything that happened that would have caused this.

Six: Friends and neighbours. To date we've had no Humans, no Goblins, and only two Kobold thieves. I want some conflict. Is it usual to take this long before the the Goblins and the Humans find us? Is it possible that they're all dead?

[Lord Dullard]

Settle on the edge of an evil ocean. You want conflict, trying zombie/skeletal whales..

[inaluct]

If possible, get a Terrifying Glacier bordering a Terrifying tropical ocean.

[Marlowe]

What? And leave my nice, warm volcano?

Anyway, I'll rephrase number two again. Is there a chance you can get an Evil Biome without any evil wildlife? Am I stuck with regular, everyday fish for the duration or is their a chance of something silly getting spawned there?

[Derakon]

Sinister is low-savage evil -- basically, you'll get not-very-impressive wildlife which may occasionally be undead. If you don't like your current selection, kill it off and a new group will spawn.

Your problem with the lake is likely due in part to evaporation; past a certain point, water evaporates faster than it spreads out from its source (water will evaporate if left too long at a depth of 1/7). You'd have better luck with higher pressure.

To see what your biomes are, you have to re-embark (preferably by using a backup save or re-genning the world, not by abandoning). This is often moderately annoying. You might consider taking a screenshot before you embark just in case you want to refer to things later.

There's a number of things that can affect framerate, but mysterious drops could be related to ambushes (stealthed goblins), so keep an eye open and maybe put out some watchcows on chains.

[Proteus]

Your problems with the well could also have to do something with the angle at which you breached the lake.
If you breach wells or lakes diagonally, the speed of water flow is extremly low.
To illustrate it:

+ = Channel floor
# = water
= = wall

Normal breech (normal speed of influx)
#####
#####                  Brook/Lake
==#==
==+==
=+++=

Diagonal breach (rather low speed of influx)

#####
##===
==#==
==+==
=+++=

[Pilsu]

Humans should have showed up on the second year, they're probably dead or can't reach you

The game slaps you with an embark warning if the water is salty. Pumping cleans it if you ever do use a map with salt water. Just build a cistern to keep it clean

Not all evil zones are equal. My terrifying forest has zombie foxes and deer. Some people's sinister homes have werewolves continually spawning and running to the nearest dwarf

[Drunken]

Remember you can press c to get a list of nearby civs.

Also its possible the framreate problems are from your cistern filling and when its full it should get back to (close to) normal.

[Wolfius]

Remember you can press c to get a list of nearby civs.

You need actual in-game contact, iirc, save your dwarves' actual civ. It won't show a civ until they interact with your fortress, be it traders, thieves, etc.

[Tcei]

Getting a good haunted/terrifying/sinister biome seems to be random luck. My current fortress sits on a terrifying jungle/mountain, and is the first one I've had in a long while that has something besides deer,mountain goats and wolves. So far i've seen a giant jaguar, tiger-man, elephants out the wah-zoo, gorrilas, a giant eagle that flies circles around my fort's entrance, some sort of monkey that the caravan slaughtered when they left, and mountain goats. So far none of them have bothered me but I imagine that'll change once I get a few more victims err imigrants and start up my various wood consuming operations.

[DJ]

Next time, try a warm terrifying swamp. Warm, so you can't use freezing to get through the multi-layer aquifer you'll most likely have. There's a good chance you'll get harpies, and that's always fun in an aboveground fortress.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

There seems to be occasional problem with mixed evil/neutral biomes where you don't get any undead ever.  I've had that happen before.

[Warlord255]

Check more carefully when you embark.

Use TAB to check, among other things, your neighbors, as it will tell you if goblins/humans/elves have access to your fortress, or are on the map at all. Sometimes they're not.

High-Savegery biomes (Untamed Wilds, Terrifying; Serene is the polar opposite with OH GOD UNICORNS RUN) are good. If you want to make goblins attack more often, you could always try the Modding forum for tips on how to make goblins come sooner.

[Brendan]

The highest bodycount I have ever gotten in a fortress was on a serene woodland map with a minor river (I think) flowing through it...unicorns all around, and they act like the old Boatmurdered elephants, if you've ever seen them. (basically, they are docile until some wiseguy caravan guard takes a potshot at them and then all hell breaks loose). But the real terror is the river. Anything adjacent to the river while it has fish in it dies. That's it. No discussion. If they don't get ripped to shreds by the sturgeons or the carp (all fish are hardcore) then they'll probably already be in the water drowning anyway after diving into it during the fight.

[arghy]

Fish man- they will kill ANYTHING i once lost 37 dwarves when i ran out of booze and dident know how to set activity zones, they just kept running toward the river the blood the horrible blood! The unicorns are scary as hell because they come in huge herds all the time, i managed to not piss them off by controling the map routes but still there was always that chance. I want to have undead for my fighting pits, cage trap 4-5 undead things put their cages in a room with a hole in it, lever the cages open and throw gobbos/hippes/humans in for fun!.