So, I found this game while searching for free linux games (it was a filthy lie, though, because DF doesn't seem to have a native linux version) and I've found it kind of awesome. I know there are a million different tutorials and so forth, but I'd much rather learn how to work things by mashing random buttons to find out what they do, so I started up (and abandoned) several fortresses and just messed with stuff. The wiki has been very helpful to reference during the process, but it doesn't seem to cover everything.
1. Is there a happy medium between window-sized and full-screen? At "normal size" with my resolution, DF occupies a tiny portion of the screen, and there doesn't seem to be any way to resize it. It'd also be cool if it were somehow possible to make it show a larger area of the map.
2. How do you keep all of the dwarves organized? I got the hang of managing the original 7 pretty well, but then the immigrants came, and suddenly there were 28, some of which had skills I didn't even have buildings for yet, or had no skills, or had redundant skills because apparently only one dwarf can use a particular building at one time. I wound up not knowing what people were doing, who had the seldom-used skills (like Architecture), and having 10-15 Idlers at any one time. Help?
3. My butcher shop was constantly creating miasma - is the meat rotting in there? There was meat successfully being put on the stockpiles, and the only rotting things I noticed were corpses (which were all outside) but I wasn't keeping very good track of how much was being brought in either.
4. How do you get dwarves to actually stay inside? I tried ordering them from the orders menu, but this just created a constant stream of dwarves leaving the fortress to go stockpile something and then saying "Oops, forbidden location" and then going back. Then I had a few dwarves who were being chased by goblins and literally ran to every part of the map except the part where the fortress was. What the heck?
5. On a related note, how do you defend against the goblins? I did put up traps, and front doors (but I can never lock them because the stupid dwarves never go inside all the way), and recruited dwarves to the army, but I can't figure out how to tell them to go attack the goblins. I'm probably just missing something really obvious.
6. Also, my cage traps did manage to catch some goblins, but then what do I do with them? Despite what the wiki says, I can't find any weapons and armor that look like they might belong to them on the stocks page, and in any case I don't seem to be able to zoom to any of it anyway. Can I butcher them? Can I tame them? Can I mercy-kill them? Can I sell them to the elves? I don't want them sitting in my fortress taking up stockpile space and cages.
7. I assigned one of my unskilled immigrants to hunt, because I wanted him out of my hair; apparently he got injured and went to rest in the barracks, with what looked like some minor wounds to one or two limbs. Later he got up and appeared to be alright, except that I would constantly be getting messages to the effect that he was canceling actions like "Get Drink" and "Move Item to Stockpile" because of "Unconsciousness". It seems he had his right eye greyed out (does that mean he lost it?), but I'm not sure how this causes narcolepsy. Will this problem go away eventually, or is he maimed for life now?
There's probably more things I forgot about, but this is probably a good start, anyway.