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[Thanshin]

There are some items I'd have never thought of taking on the embark and now do. I'm not talking about challenges, just things I've learned or grown accustomed to.

 - A dog and a leash: lately, I start forts by opening a three space entry and tying a wardog on the door, to kill early thieves. Later, when I have some defenses, I use the leash for the first well and I eat the dog.

 - Much more wood: I'm including more and more wood in my embarks. Very soon I'm completely replace the axe for a lot more wood and a metal bar.

How have your embark items evolved as you learned to play?

[Cody1750]

I bring one kaolinite rock for my well or an important lever if I am going to include a draw bridge or something along those lines.

[Thanshin]

I bring one kaolinite rock for my well or an important lever if I am going to include a draw bridge or something along those lines.

Just for the color?

[shadowform]

-51 wood logs
-5 bituminous coal / lignite
-3 copper bars
-10 turtles
-1 leather
-1 cloth
-10 bauxite (if there's magma)

Logs are rationed as needed until the fort is secure enough to risk dwarves heading outside, coal is used to smelt necessities such as the copper axe that replaces the steel one that the game defaults, turtles, cloth, and leather for moods, bauxite for floodgates and mechanisms.

[Vattic]

I take a rock for the workshops and all the ingredients needed to make some picks and an axe rather than buying them on embark.

[kobot]

totally scrapping axes and anvil is standard practice for me now
i bring one of every meat worth less than $10 because each one comes in its own individual barrel
i bring seeds for every booze plant (I used to just bring plump helmets to start and trade for the others later and in hindsite i can't understand why i did it)

[Thanshin]

-3 copper bars

Why bars instead of nuggets + casiterite?

[Tally]

I bring some minor amounts of wood (enough to get the bare necessity for beds bins and barrels, and enough to make charcoal for making an axe), a good stack of tetrahedrite (10 - 15 usually), and take away the axe. From there I get a big surplus of points to spend elsewhere... like food! And dogs! (Prefer to buy normal dogs and train them later, less points used)

I keep the picks since it only costs 20 per pick anyway, but aside from that I just twitch about having to built a workshop above ground to make picks and an axe and then disassembling it. Just... doesn't click with me as right.

I also set my woodcutter/carpenter as an axedwarf, particularly because he's usually close to the main hall, outside, or in between when the trouble starts. So it's simple to just hit m, scroll down, hit a, and the guy pummels someone.

I do tend to give my miners some military skills (what else am I going to assign them for?), but I find they're almost never necessary this early on, as being attacked past thieves is usually rare, and the woodcutter can deal with that.

I bring 2 miners cause the faster I can get the insides carved out, the faster I can get everyone inside and have my fort running. They usually hit legendary before the year is over anyway (or in my experience, one hits legendary, the other hits it next season).

After my bare necessities are carved, exploratory mining then proceeds until I find an ore vein.

[geoduck]

- A dog and a leash: lately, I start forts by opening a three space entry and tying a wardog on the door, to kill early thieves. Later, when I have some defenses, I use the leash for the first well and I eat the dog.

I bring at least two dogs/leashes, cut my initial entrance two tiles wide and immediately station a dog on either side; it is possible for a dagger-armed thief to kill a lone dog. Plus one more rope for a well.

Also a full variety of seeds and booze, lots of plump helmets and turtles, a little cloth, silk and leather to stave off strange moods, a few chunks of bauxite for mechanisms, possibly a couple bars of my mayor-to-be's favorite metal, and, as others have noted, no anvil. I do spring for the steel axe, and give my carpenter/woodcutter some training for it, because sometimes the local wildlife isn't going to give you time to set up a forge and crank out a weapon.

The rest of the anvil-money goes to buying large amounts of whatever the destination lacks: wood, coal and/or flux. I sure hope the new version lets a player bring sand along, or buy it off caravans.

[Toxicles]

2 cats
4 dogs
1 steel axe
120 drinks (mixed flavors)
1 of each meat worth 2 points
about 80 seeds
all dwarves with 10 skills
the rest is wood...i'll embark with hundreds sometimes

No anvil, ever.  I just buy one.  Between the human and dwarven caravans, there are like a dozen available within a year anyway.  More importantly, they're happy to trade it for a giant pile of really terrible stone crafts.

I bring at least 4 dogs and let them have babies everywhere.  Having a giant horde of war dogs really goes a long way toward securing the safety of your dwarves.

I also find myself embarking with more and more picks.  I'm up to five.  I just keep mining!

[Roostre]

After a catsplosion caused so much lag that I had to abandon my second fortress, I vowed to embark with only one cat forever after. Frankly, I prefer the presence of vermin to a hundred unbutcherable kitties slowing my game down.

I also always embark with no less than four picks, but might cut my miners down to three once they're skilled enough to work quickly.

Since I always site new forts in places with plenty of trees, I don't tend to embark with any wood at all. I usually have one dwarf chopping down all the trees on the Z-level where the entrance to the new fort is dug out right at the start, and presto. All the wood I'll need for a year or two is right there. To hell with the elves' opinions, as I'm fairly good at dealing with them in war.

But, when raids are turned off and I don't have to worry about metalworking to equip dwarves for battle, I'll embark with an anvil or two anyway... and then just trade them when the first caravan arrives for large amounts of stuff I turn out to be in need of in light of the fort's unique conditions. I also find the trading interface a lot easier to manage than the journey preparation one...

[InsanityPrelude]

I don't bring much food or seeds, as a challenge: enough to get started, but forcing me to get food production of some sort set up quick.

[Kidsta]

If I want a fort to do well, I bring:

-30 Rock Nuts
-About 10-15 cheap leather bags
-All the liquor I can carry, removing one of the default Axes to get more

Never run out of food that way

[KaelGotDwarves]

I always bring booze/meat in denominations of 1 more than base10: 11, 21, 31. Sometimes I bring 30 different kinds of meat, along with the 4 available types of booze.

This will give you one "free" extra barrel for every one.

[Canadark]

Coal and turtles.