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[PTTG??]

Lessee here- most difficult embark?

Empty cart and all the rest are cats.

Not difficult for the dwarves; on the contrary, they will be living fat on cat tallow biscuits, living with everything they could want in the form of *cat bone trinket*-bought-items. This embark would instead be incredibly hard for the player to deal with 2 FPS forever.

Alternatively, go for a 1x1 or 2x2 embark in a badlands area, so you have very few plants and no hiding from invaders. Also, it'd be neat to have to fill the entire map with rooms and workshops

[w4ldf33]

An anvil.
Trading is for sissys.
A pick will come ... in time ... maybe... ^^

[RAM]

You are allowed to have 2 anvils, if you can afford them, then you can trade an anvil...
But bear in mind that your three starting wood will all be trading depot...

I say booze, lots and lots of booze, you can trade booze, youcan drink booze, you can enjoy your friends dying wrestling animals to death for their precious bones because of booze, you can even make barrels out of booze...
of course, once you have a bone crossbow and one stack of bolts this becomes far too easy...

[Albedo]

(You don't need to buy a crossbow and bolts to get those.)

[sunshaker]

Without Modding it is the pick or maybe Plump Helmets (wood from the wagon for the still and a few barrels (build the carpenters shop first then remove it to build the still), everyone gets drunk on dwarven wine while they forage for food).

With modding then I'd say Obsidian (or Flint or Chert if you make them [SHARP]. You would need to add a Hand Axe (think small axe, half damage, with [CAN_STONE]), you get the wood need for the hand axes from the wagon and then you can cut down some trees for more tools/weapons, you can build stuff from the rocks (buildings, crafts, the trade depot). Unless you are modding to make a rock pick available though you can't mine. Hunt and Forage for food should be easy though.

[Puck]

Take your starting points, spend them on any skills you want, but you may only take one item with you.

As many of that item as you want, but nothing else.

I'm sorry, but am I missing something? Because....

How about just bringing several anvils, then melting some of them down into the resources for picks and axes.
Shouldnt that work? (just occured to me... where to take the resources for a smelter, if all you have is anvils  )

So I'd probably just bring 7 picks, and then I'd be getting busy on that mountain, bro. Create stuff to trade for an anvil, if possible from the first caravan, and from there it's just a small step to everything you want.

Biggest challenge would probably be to keep the suckers fed and hydrated til the caravan comes, but nothing impossible, imho.
Especially not if you bring a good plant gatherer, I guess.

Of course it would be a lot easier if you could butcher dwarves and use their bones and whatnot.

[RAM]

Could you make a smelter out of a wooden block? You could use one log to make a carpenter's, use that to make a block, recycle the log, use the block to make a wood furnace, then make 2 charcoal, turn the block into a smelter, spend one coal melting down an anvil, then build a metalsmith's, make an axe, and then you have enough wood to go crazy...

[PTTG??]

Nope, has to be non-lumber to make any furnaces.
Also, much more cash-efficient to smelt the raw ore.

[Derakon]

People who are suggesting making obsidian swords, beds, or barrels: remember that you need to be able to produce more building materials if you do this, since it "uses up" one of your units of wood, which thus prevents you from making a trade depot.

[Albedo]

<nods>

Sorry, most of you just don't get it - there's only one answer.  Some of the above are very creative (and some are worth the laugh intended), but not very realistic.

Because the Trade Depot is the key, for the caravan.  Every(?) dwarf caravan carries blocks of some sort - there's everything you need. Blocks, barrels, empty or full of some drink or food, plus at least two cloth/leather bins. Possibly an axe and a pick, but if you get an anvil you're making your own anyway at that point.

So the challenge is twofold - both lasting until mid-Autumn when the caravan arrives, and having the several thousand of dwarfbucks worth of goods to trade for the goods, in case only a steel anvil shows up.

From test-runs I've done (early experiments, ignoring all else while playing with other game factors), dwarfs tend to start to crack by mid- or late-summer if they're sleeping outside and in the dirt, with nothing produced to distract them, even with a mountain of alcohol and food lying next to them.

Without that one pick to get them inside at least, chances are most won't last to the arrival of the caravan.  What's more, that pick also gets the blocks to build any and every workshop - some chairs and tables and statues, some armor and bags, some bone crossbows, toss in some smoothed walls for your dining hall  - your dwarfs may have the DT's and drink from murky pools for a few seasons, but you're home free after that.

And that's THE dealbreaker.

(I'll grant that with an axe you could construct actual log-roofed buildings to get them "inside" - but if no one mentioned that, I'm guessing they missed this little detail entirely.  And while wood chairs/tables/statues/trade items as impressive, and valuable, as common stone, you have nothing but time for exploratory mining to find something better.)

[Smew]

That's the point, we're not trying to do the most sane and easy thing possible, we're trying to accomplish the impossible with the most insane and difficult ways available!

[The Orange Mage]

I brought ONE axe.

I just did an embark in a normal forest with a stream and a magma pipe underground. It was pretty easy to be honest. Never low on wood, just had to pump out a good amount of barrels. Butchered the two animals they give you with the wagon, made bone bolts and crossbow, made someone hunt. Grew strawberries and rat weed I think. No problem making it to autumn with enough goods to get picks and anvils. It basically just set back my fort one year.

[Albedo]

Hmmm - went better than I would have guessed. Good job!

You make wood roofed areas for shelter?  How did those work out?

That's the point, we're not trying to do the most sane and easy thing possible, we're trying to accomplish the impossible with the most insane and difficult ways available!

Ah - well, carry on then!

(Still, to be valid, wouldn't they have to, you know... work?)

[RAM]

The problem is that you need the ash in order to build the wood furnace in order to make the ash you need to build the smelter...

[The Orange Mage]

Hmmm - went better than I would have guessed. Good job!

You make wood roofed areas for shelter?  How did those work out?

Nope, just had them hanging out by the cart that year. They had nice booze and after my hunter brought back some deer I made some prepared meals so I got no complaints from my dwarfs apart from not liking their grassy beds and lack of chairs and rain. I did, however, build a small building that would become my Windmill since I accidentally started my farming system with whip vines. Had to wait for the traders to come with picks before I could finish it, of course. I might just stay above-ground with this fort as much as I can!