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[RandomNumberGenerator]

I generally find I only need ~800☼ worth of stuff to get my fort going(including skills) so anvil or no-anvil works either way for me. Generally I take an anvil, just so I have one when I need one.

[yuriatayde]

I bring an anvil roughly 50% of the time, depending on how I want to build. Recently, my focus is on bringing 4 dogs, and 500 or so stacks of wood, for convenience. Also crossbow ammunition. I don't bother with dwarf skills, preferring to level them up on my own, so my main export for awhile is usually crossbows... And I like it that way.

Whenever I DO bring the anvil, it's either an oversight/accident, or because I'm trying something with it. On that note, I would definitely recommend to ANY newbie that they dump the anvil, because if you're experienced enough to need it; you're experienced enough to not need my advice. The conveniences you can buy yourself for 1000 points (even if you're inefficient about it, like me) will make the first couple of years SO MUCH less of a hassle!

Bauxite, wood, booze, pets, leather, rope, tools, skills, weapons, take your pick, for one anvil, it's not even a question for me. Worst case scenario I'll kill the caravan and steal their anvil! I like wars anyway.

Food export? I never even thought of that. Usually I just dump my food whenever I wind up getting too much of it. I don't think I'll start selling it though, it sounds more exploity then fun considering an overabundance of food is a fact of life, and not a choice of mine. (and I usually only have one farmer!)

[SenorOcho]

Also keep in mind that many dwarf civs will have bituminous coal on embark. 3☼ for 2 coke without magma means you can bring enough to last a very long time even with an anvil and maxed skills on your dwarves.

[Shurikane]

My playstyle makes it so my food production takes off late, as I focus early on with building a preliminary defense/filtering arrangement.  As such, I never take an anvil with me on embark.

Besides, by the time I actually find that one could be useful for my purposes, I often have several crafts and/or goblin clothes lying around and available for trade.

[Kaelem Gaen]

Oddly enough I've started dumping the majority of the Unusable clothes from Kobolds, Goblins, and other Invaders, I mean if I have some around that I haven't dumped yet I might sell it to traders, but usually I try to just sell the stuff my fortress made itself.
I seem to be more Economically minded, I also try to sell what the traders request instead of selling food.... unless they want the food.

I mean, you can get alot for the *<<Narrow Silk Shirt>>* but it doesn't increase your "Exported" (or is it imported?) wealth stat in the Z menu.

[zwei]

I find this debate academic at best: embarking with items at all is overrated. You can embark with naked and uskilled dwarves and still end up with enough to buy whatever you do need from autumn caravan.

Whatever you bring at embark is just matter of playstyle and tradeoff. Basically, there are two strategies:

a) bring raw materials and make whatever you need.
b) bring ready-to use stuff and just use it.

a) Allows you to bring more stuff overall at expense of dwarf workforce. (simply put, dwarf smelting ore and smithing pick means someone is not mining yet)
b) Makes you to bring less stuff, but you end up with freed up workforce. (say, if you bring 40 barels, so you do not have to make your carpenter make 40 barels from logs you brought)

It really depends on whether your dwarves are always idle early on (then bring anvil) or always busy (then od not bring anvil)

I mean, you can get alot for the *<<Narrow Silk Shirt>>* but it doesn't increase your "Exported" (or is it imported?) wealth stat in the Z menu.

If you decorate loot (sew cloth image), it will then count as "your product" and thus as export (and can be given out as gift). Since majorty of loot will lack decorations, you can decorate a LOT of your narrow/tiny/large items.

You can easily make cloth items worth of 1500 bucks each (masterpiece cloth, masterpiece dye, masterpiece tailoring).

It also makes your goods more "compact": tailoring new piece would create yet another item that fills bins and needs to be hauled. It is also great for training new tailor.

[smokingwreckage]

I swap the anvil out for turtles and booze, which suits me much better since my dwarves are usually very busy early on.

[random51]

I only sell the stuff I make.  Enemy metal armor gets melted down, the weapons go into weapon traps or are melted, and the jewelry is kept as trophies. I don't even know why anybody would want to buy blood-soaked clothing with a bunch of holes in it.

...and you don't have to rely upon a "food" economy if you start without an anvil. Rock crafts can pay for everything you need.

[assimilateur]

...and you don't have to rely upon a "food" economy if you start without an anvil. Rock crafts can pay for everything you need.

...and you don't have to rely upon a "rock crafts" economy if you start without an anvil. Food can pay for everything you need (and is useful in itself).

[hitto]

...and you don't have to rely upon a "food" economy if you start without an anvil. Rock crafts can pay for everything you need.

That's a mean thing to tell a newbie. You know he'll just end up going :
"down, enter, down, enter, down, enter, down, enter, down, enter, NOOO, not the bins, not the precious bins... down, enter, down, enter, down, enter, down, enter, down, enter........"

[csebal]

...and you don't have to rely upon a "food" economy if you start without an anvil. Rock crafts can pay for everything you need.

That's a mean thing to tell a newbie. You know he'll just end up going :
"down, enter, down, enter, down, enter, down, enter, down, enter, NOOO, not the bins, not the precious bins... down, enter, down, enter, down, enter, down, enter, down, enter........"

Except if you do that, the trader will just tell you to go and drink water, as he will not take this pile of junk as it is. Whereas if you keep the items in the bins, he will happily trade it. I guess it must be realted to the number of items traded, but im not sure of the exact stats behind it.

I was like: down, enter, down, enter too.. then i just got bored of it, and started trading bins instead. A bin worth of junk pays for all the wood the trader bought me, which in turn allows me to make more bins. Suffice to say, wood is always no#1 on my wish list even on heavily forested maps. You just cant have enough wood imo.

As for my preferred starting build:
1 dwarf of each metal craft, as those are usually quite a pain in the butt to train
1 brewer / cook
1 farmer
1 dwarf with some social skills to be the expedition leader and i usually make him an ambusher too.

Not optimal point wise, but im not a big fan of cross training useless skills just to spend my initial 10 allowed levels, plus its important that the metalworkers keep their primary profession in the hopes of catching a lucky mood, jumping them to legendary.

Items:
*No anvil, tho it depends on the embark environment.
*Variable amount of food and booze, depending on my gameplan. If i plan on diggin a shelter first in the immediate vicinity of the cart, then i can get the food production up fast and do not need much. If i want to dig the proper fortress entrance right at the start, then it is not uncommon, that i only get the farming up as late as autumn. It is not uncommon for me to start with a 160ish booze stockpile and a 80 food stockpile. As you can imagine, that lasts more than a year giving me plenty of time to build my fort without having to worry about food production.
*4 picks - i rotate my miners, so the first 4 metalworkers get to mine until they reach level 4 (about a season) at which point the remaining 3 dwarves take over until the first migration wave arrives, which is usually mid-autumn.
*no axe - the 100 wood you can get instead lasts a lot longer than needed really
*wood. around 100 ish, sometimes a lil more, sometimes a lil less.
*20-25 bituminous coal, if available. costing the same as wood, they might come handy if i need to forge something before i get the magma industry up. 2x 3x this many, if there is no magma on the map.
*on magma maps, i tend to bring 20-30 bauxite as well.
*~10 seeds of each type i plan on planting from the start
*domesticated animals. a minimum of 4 dogs a cat and a breeding pair of cows. A bigger variety if i can afford it.

The actual numbers vary a lot depending on what i have in mind, the surroundings and whats available.

Again, its not something i calculated to be mathematically optimal, i find it to be decent tho. The only real drawback of such a resource heavy setup if can find is quite ironic. It can take a better part of a season for my 7 dwarves to haul everything inside the fortress to the proper stockpiles. Especially so, if the fortress stockpiles are a bit further away from the wagon, which can happen if i go overly zealous with the fortress entrance

[Lord Shonus]

I don't understand the need for more than one pick on embark. I can usually have everyone undergrond, farming, and working in a season with only one miner, and, as long as I brought ore, I can buy out the caravan with *Copper Chain Mail* by autumn.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

I don't understand the need for more than one pick on embark. I can usually have everyone undergrond, farming, and working in a season with only one miner, and, as long as I brought ore, I can buy out the caravan with *Copper Chain Mail* by autumn.

I like to have all my guys mine a bit for the stat gain. SO having six or seven picks starting off makes sure I can always have a nice little Dwarf Training Squad going, whether it's my originals or my immigrants. I don't like starting with a trained "miner" because it's so easy to train up.

[Lord Shonus]

Ah. Far more reasonable than pump operating, as it gives you some dabbling miners in case the good one dies. Makes good sense.

I prefer to spend points on mining and use one dwarf in case I strike ore, gems, or kimberlite (I like the blue color, and make as many structures out of kimberlite as I can) in my (generally long) entrance halls. That's just a preference issue.

[100killer9]

I find I tend to bring horses instead of an anvil, for livestock.