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[darkflagrance]

^Not only that, but their skills are crappier to boot.

Though you do get a ton of free steel weapons and armor...

[Heliomance]

On the other hand, you also get the months of work that you've already put towards the project. Enough progress had been made that I didn't want to scrap it and start again.

[Heliomance]

Update: On my sixth (?) reclaim, I finally managed to get the dining room constructed. Due to the fact that everything is made of solid gold, it's legendary right off the bat. Everyone is happy!

On the other hand, I've just managed to drop my administrator in the river, and she can't swim. Whoops.

[JoystickHero]

You could leave a note on the location of where it is, and just embark a new party there. Can't you?

[Heliomance]

No, you can't embark on a previous site without reclaiming.

Also, it seems not even a legendary dining room is enough to stave off a tantrum spiral. Imagine, if you will, the following series of events:

Due to the fact that I have an immense gold and glass production industry and I haven't been keeping a good enough eye on my stockpiles, I run out of wood.

I send my woodcutters out to cut down more trees, and realise that there aren't many trees to cut.

I realise that this is due to the fact that because I've clearcut the map multiple times, there are a huge number of shrubs growing instead of trees.

I designate all the shrubs for gathering to clear space for new trees.

All my farmers run off to go shrub collecting.

So no farmers are actually farming.

So I run out of plump helmets.

So I run out of booze.

At this point, the elves, for some unknown reason, attack.

Oh, and the single cat I brought so as not to provoke a catsplosion isn't efficient enough at hunting, and so dwarves are getting accosted by vermin.

[Dorf3000]

..
I designate all the shrubs for gathering to clear space for new trees.

All my farmers run off to go shrub collecting.

So no farmers are actually farming.
...

This exact same thing happened to me on one of my early forts.  Plus I lost a couple of them to ambushes.  Now I never enable plant gathering on anyone except woodcutters (they have an axe at least..)

The worst part about reclaiming is that all the dwarves are already friends, and they all start off with quite low happiness.  When you embark, the dwarves don't really know each other and they gain happiness quickly by making friends, drinking booze, etc. so you are never really in danger of tantrumming in the first season.  On a reclaim, you have to think about making happy thoughts and avoiding bad ones even before you start battling whatever creatures are living in your main hall.

[Heliomance]

First screenshots!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is the main (and only) entryway into the fortress. It's currently unfinished. It's not made out of brick, it's made out of clear glass, and the floor is getting replaced bit by bit with glass. It was originally made out of whatever was closest as I frantically tried to get it done in time for the first traders. It leads to...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The actual entrance. Once you've gone through the glass tunnel, you go under this bit. This is two bridges, one above the other. The waterfall lands on the top bridge and pours off the sides, creating a nice mist which occasionally drifts over the path. The lower bridge - made of glass - is the path into the fortress. There is a lever which will raise both bridges, not only making a gap in the path but also allowing the waterfall to come down unobstructed.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is all that's currently constructed of the main fort. Made entirely of golden blocks, with a glass tube up the middle. The partial floor at the bottom of it is going to be a reservoir, storing water not only for the wells in my dining room, but also for the mist generators I'm going to have on every floor. The next floor up is my dining room, the only room on the bridge currently functional. Everything, including the wells, furniture, and fortress control levers, is made of solid gold.

The glass column down the middle will eventually carry water from the top of the cliff to the reservoir.

The two piers at the bottom are all that Visual Fortress will render of my power plant. I have a long string of waterwheels there, powering two pump stacks that draw water from the river and take it right up to this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This aqueduct is also made entirely out of clear glass. Its phallic nature was unintended. Water from the two pump stacks flows in here, and will fall through a hatch positioned directly over the centre of the glass tube that runs down the middle of the fortress. This will be the method by which the fort gets its water, but I'm not going to start it up until I have a roof on the fortress!

[Sysice]

Can we have actual screenshots? Or better yet, a map?

[Heliomance]

Tried to upload to DFMA, apparently the filesize is too big.

[Ubiq]

I designate all the shrubs for gathering to clear space for new trees.

All my farmers run off to go shrub collecting.

So no farmers are actually farming.

So I run out of plump helmets.

So I run out of booze.

Why didn't you just brew the plants they gathered? Or was there nothing on the map besides Blade weed and Hide root?

[Heliomance]

All the brewers were gathering as well. I'd stupidly assigned skills by broad category. I didn't make that mistake again.

As for uploading the map, I tried to put it on DFMA, but apparently the filesize is too big.

[Heliomance]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The thing in the foreground is the first of my two bedroom tower complexes. The shaft at the bottom goes through the river into the bedrock, and will lead to the necropolis/mausoleum once said cemetery is built. It's entirely made out of clear glass blocks, around 2800 of the things.

Behind that you can see the main fortress. The unfinished floor at the top is the under-construction nobles' quarters. Above that will go the throne room and royal quarters, then the roof. The fortress proper is made entirely of golden blocks, as are every single workshop inside. The ashery even has a golden bucket, though the barrel is an artifact made of copper. The only other things not made out of gold in the fort are the immense numbers of barrels and bins I use for storage, and the assorted axles and beds, which are all made of wood. There are currently 7750 golden blocks in the fortress and I've mined out every single gold vein on the map. I shamefully confess to using Dwarf Companion to transmute my tetrahedrite veins to more gold - I decided to make everything out of gold because having looked at the map I seemed to have immense amounts of it. Unfortunately, it seems I didn't have enough for something on this scale. We live and learn.

On the left, you can see through to the valley that houses my outdoor farming. I removed all ramps in the valley, and walled off the only path in, so now the only way to get there is through a tunnel from inside the fortress.

[yuriatayde]

I've actually never had a tantrum spiral, all my failures were either from self destructing out of boredom about 10 years in, or being attacked and murdered... sometimes from accidental misfires of my own inventions, like that time I learned that Magma is unpressurized UNLESS powered by a screw pump.

I have a few tricks that work for me; all of which can be summarized into one quick note. If you NEED something, it is worth it to have a single dwarf whom is absolutely not allowed to do anything except for that. My farmer doesn't even have food hauling for example. It helps a ton!

[Heliomance]

I learnt from the first umpteen failures, and now all my dwarves only have one thing they do. No-one except my dedicated haulers has any hauling turned on.

[Blackburn]

When that's finished, it'll be beautiful...

I suggest installing a system to drop the whole fort into the river. Just in case you feel like self-destructing.