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[The Architect]

In come the ninjas to shame-on-me. Whatever. If you can't just accept that I said bringing an anvil depends on player preference, but here are the effects in terms of sheer efficiency, then you're just not mature enough to participate in the discussion.

Starting an argument is trolling. And he was clearly spoiling for an argument. I'm not giving it to him, but as I said I'll happily go off-topic in another thread or PMs, where it would not further derail this one with discussions of efficient mining.

[Lav]

The question here is how to define efficiency.

I always start digging and/or building on very large scale from the very first day on site. So for me the efficiency is getting maximum dwarf labour out of my seven founders.

With such an approach to efficiency, starting with a smith takes away 1/6 of my available dwarflabour. Dedicated woodcutter takes away another 1/6. Planter takes away another 1/6. One dwarf is needed to make trade goods anyway, so I don't include him in the calculations. So should I sacrifice 50% of available dwarf labour for the sake of "efficiency"? I think not. :-)

Incidentally, I can remember only one case when I took an anvil during embark, and it was when I played a strictly no-digging fortress. :-) I reasoned that since I'm taking a woodcutter, a planter, a brewer, a cook, a weaver and a clothier anyway, then I don't need all those extra resources and so I was left with tons of free points to buy pretty much anything.

[The Architect]

Ah, I assumed no one could want more than two trained miners. From what you are saying, you actually spend points in mining on several dwarves?

Getting underground is simple enough, two days' work from a single miner. Digging a huge area... well, if you care more about getting your mining done very quickly than having skilled dwarves, of course that makes sense.

I think you're in the extreme minority to say the least. Don't you always have tons of points to spend on embark? Doesn't everyone find themselves with extra points? The only possible exceptions I could think of would be if you wasted money on useless items like expensive food, or if you were running a carnivorous fortress and needed your animal breeding to begin immediately.

I'm with an earlier poster who said that he couldn't possibly understand why people find themselves running short on points. I haven't had that problem since running a fortress the first couple of times and finding out how things work.

[Arrkhal]

I usually have about 500 "extra" points, but that means I'd have to sacrifice 500 non-extra points to take an anvil along.

Also, just to be different, I like to buy mining on only a single dwarf, then take 7 picks.  1 foreman, 6 workers.  The foreman usually reaches legendary just as I find my first ore deposit, so it works for me.

I think the only way I'd take an anvil would be if I skipped the axe (I always embark with a pile of wood, axe or no) and ditched all my food (except turtles).  Those are the two lowest priority items.

[assimilateur]

if you were running a carnivorous fortress and needed your animal breeding to begin immediately.

If you're serious about raising livestock, then you won't have to play a carnivore species to want to get started with that ASAP. Whenever camels are available, I make a point out of getting them, which costs me 1004 points (they are 251 a piece, and you need four if you wanted breeding pairs of both bactrian and dromedary camels). You can't order them from the caravan, so if you want to raise them at all, you are going to have to either embark with them or be lucky to have them spawn on your map and catch them. Getting them from elves is too random as well, and for some of us impossible (I mod my game so that I only trade with dwarves, and get attacked by everyone else).

Hell, to get any livestock breeding done reliably, you pretty much have to embark with at least a breeding pair of your favorite species (I recommend opting for nothing cheaper than cows, since both their size (9) and modvalue (2) are respectable. Why, you ask? I'm going to repeat myself if I say that if your traders pass through territory with extreme weather, you can expect them to arrive with corpses instead of livestock.

[Lalandrathon]

I usually bring an anvil, just so I don't have to worry too much about getting a trade industry going. I'm usually busy enough constructing and digging out the fort and I'd rather be training masons in the fine art of block building than have some craftsdwarf pumping out clutter.

[Lav]

Ah, I assumed no one could want more than two trained miners. From what you are saying, you actually spend points in mining on several dwarves?

Not necessarily. Sometimes I do put a point or two into mining, sometimes not. They are usually masons/designers, though sometimes I make them proficient glassmakers, it all depends on my plans.

Getting underground is simple enough, two days' work from a single miner. Digging a huge area... well, if you care more about getting your mining done very quickly than having skilled dwarves, of course that makes sense.

Well, I usually house my dwarves in a 13x13x15 block. And I like it to be cast from pure obsidian. So the tasks are: digging, getting the valuable stones/gems out, tapping the pipe and river, building all the magma- and waterducts and corresponding mechanics and dropbridges and running the thing. And I'm impatient so spending 2 years on this is out of the question. :-)

I think you're in the extreme minority to say the least. Don't you always have tons of points to spend on embark?

Naturally I do. And if I had enough to buy an anvil without cutting on truly important things, I would. It's not like I'm ideologically opposed to anvils, I just treat them as a luxury.

And in fact I think new players are much better off without an anvil. Surviving for the first year or so is hard enough for them. When they start getting ambushes and sieges, they can start worrying about metal and all the related production queues. But until that time there's still plenty to learn. Smithing is not essential for fortress survival, and it diverts a lot of attention away from more important subjects like farming, digging, building, trading, stockpiles and zones assignment, dealing with water, wells et cetera.

[slink]

I don't embark with an anvil.  My method of building is to get the life-support structure in place and then begin on the other aspects of the fort.  I suppose that if a person likes to start with the other aspects and plans on buying all of their food and booze, then they might start with an anvil.

[ThreeToe]

The Architect has been muted 3 days for trolling.

[Lord Dakoth]

I never embark with an anvil, mostly because I don't usually get a metalsmithing system set up for a while. By that time, I've usually had the chance to snag two or three from traders. My most recent fort is in it's fourth or fifth year, and the champions are still running into battle just with wooden shields. I find it much more useful to spend my extra points on mood items, like platinum bars and precious cut gems.

Most of the time, the only reason I set up metalsmithing is because steel armor costs so much to buy, especially since it is usually gratuitously decorated.

[nil]

I always take an anvil.  I'm with those who never really felt a need to save the points, although that could have something to do with not really wanting to breed every animal that's available for FPS reasons.  Might feel differently if I played much in maps where food and wood weren't plentiful, too--I don't even bring a grower, usually.  Herbalism and hunting are enough for my starting 7.

[GL12]

Unsure if this is considered thread necromancy here, but...

Unless I have flux on the map, I tend to bring an anvil. This is for a very simple reason, otherwise I run out of labor.

I bring: A carpenter dorf who's busy making beds, a masondorf who's making tables chairs and  doors, 2 miners, a leader/woodcutter, a grower/brewer, and a mechanic. That's 7 dorfs. So I don't have the labor required to devote to useless crafts and such. On occasion, I have been known to make one of the miners also a mechanic, but then a miner drops out halfway into the game. Unless I have the flux required to make mechanisms viable trade goods, then I have very real trouble getting the points needed for an anvil.

Mind you, when I'm on a glacier (my favored build) then I can spare a dorf, the main problem there comes with needing labor to clear out areas for stockpiles.

[Jacob/Lee]

Evil evil Rafal and your legal cheating

Yeah booze-cooking is a cheat, but cooking meat and tallow from hunted animals is not so much, and you can easily get the same effect from stonecrafting, but since I had over 4000 stone crafts in one of my forts, I prefer other solutions, cause hauling of all these stones and stone crafts is so much of a pain.

Did you try bins?

[Gelmax]

Rather than your dwarves, I'd think the decision to bring an anvil depends heavily on your surroundings and circumstances when you embark. I brought an anvil to my current fort, but forgot that it was on a treeless map (and brought no wood!), so that anvil was absolutely useless to me until my fort had grown enough that I could afford to send a bunch of miners to search for the magma pipe. It's not like I've had any problems with buying stuff from the traders, either. Between putting a mason to work on stone crafts and building bone crafts after clearing out the annoying undead wildlife, the first year of caravans went fine. And by the time I'd found the magma, the goblin ambushers were coming in great enough numbers that their clothes alone were enough to buy everything a caravan had, anvil and all. With their ludicrously valuable giant cave spider silk stuff, one goblin's inventory is more than enough to afford an iron anvil.

[random51]

I don't bring an anvil, ever. The only negative I've found is the chance of getting a strange mood that requires an anvil before you get one. I've only had that happen playing modded games where you get sieged early on.

2 picks
2 dogs 2 muskox, or 10 dogs if I can't get muskox
16 plump helmet spawn/pig tail/rock nut/sweet pod
20 shellfish, 80 random food
100 random drink
the rest on tower-cap logs

skills:
miner
miner
grower/cook
grower/brewer
carpenter

I'd rather use the points from the anvil that I don't need on bringing lots of wood.  Wood is the only thing in the game that I seem to be perpetually short of, at least in the first couple decades until I setup massive treefarming which I don't do until I've got 80+ dwarves to dedicate to clearing all of the stone out of an entire level. I don't even do this anymore, by the time I've got a good treefarm going I've built every bed, barrel, and bin I'm likely to need and if I don't have magma I don't do a metal industry so I don't need wood for fuel.

Having all of that extra wood at the start means that dwarves never sleep on the ground and I don't have to spend lots of time micro-managing barrel/bin utilization.

By the time I need an anvil I often don't even need to buy it. Goblins or Orcs have usually "liberated" one from dwarf or human caravans and left it sitting out on the map somewhere. I just have to find a dwarf brave enough to run out and retrieve it.

As far as the original question of "over-rated", I don't think it is a question of rating.  An anvil is 1000 points, if you can't find a better way to spend them than on an anvil I don't think you're really trying.