1. The biggest fortress you can make is a 768 by 768 game map tile map. If that made any sense. To clarify: when you embark, you see three maps. From right to left it's the world map, region map and local map. It says so above each part. Basically, each map is a bit zoomed in and more detailed piece of the map to the right of it. The one that's the most important is the one on the left. You can resize the game map (the map where you'll be actually building your fortress) with the UMKH keys and move it with umkh. The biggest embark site you can have, is the full 16 by 16 tiles on the local map, which corresponds to one region tile. And seeing one local tile equals 48 tiles on your embark site (where you build and all that jazz), the biggest site is 48*16 or 768 by 768 tiles. Now, mind you that this is really large, and a 5 by 5 map should be big enough.
2. You either trade with a caravan for bars of metal (or metal items, such as cages, unusable armour, toys...). These are only offered to you by human and dwarven caravans, though. The other way is to dig for [ur=http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Orel]ores[/url]. Then smelt them to bars of metal.
3. You need coke, charcoal or magma to fuel your smelters, glass furnaces, kilns and forges. The most readily available of those three is most likely charcoal. Chop down trees, build a wood furnace, assign some dwarf to the wood burning labour, and add one or multiple "Make charcoal" jobs. The dwarf who you just assigned to wood burning duty will then burn the wood into charcoal, making it readily available for your smelters, glass furnaces, kilns and forges. The second type of fuel, is coke. This is obtained from lignite or bituminous coal, both types of rock. They need to be refined at a smelter, and thus also need a piece of fuel to be smelted, however lignite produces two pieces of coke and bituminous coal three. So you'll always have a net gain of minimum one piece of coal. And then there's also magma, but you specified no magma, so I'll not delve into that.
4. Seasons change, it takes 3 months of 28 days (in-game, obviously) for one season to pass. The days also have an exact length, but I'm not entirely sure how long it takes. There is a calendar available in the stocks menu, which can be opened with the z key. However, if you've never seen a season change, you do indeed die quickly. May I ask why?
5. When autumn comes, you'll get a dwarven caravan. If you wish to trade with them, build a trading depot, and read
the wiki article on trading. Seriously, do it. It's not so easy to trade. Now, when you've traded (or just when the traders have been to your fortress, I can't quite remember) they go back home and tell tales of the magnificent wealth of your fortress. The next spring, you'll then normally get immigrants.
6. For goblins, it's a basic defence, but only if your tactic is to turtle up. This could get annoying with ambushes, seeing they spring at your dwarves out of nowhere. So you should prepare for some losses due to ambushes, or chain up a pair of war dogs out front.
7. As soon as possible, however it really becomes important when you've got a wounded dwarf.
8. Try hitting n. Most of the pre-embark commands are listed at the bottom of the screen. Pay some more attention to it.
9. Theoretically, none (seeing there are people who go for a no-points embark, which means you spend no points. Neither to skills or items). However, it's always very handy to have at least one miner ready. The same goes for a brewer and a planter. They provide you with booze and food. Note that you'll need to have some sort of soil available for farms to be built. Preferably subterranean, where you can grow plump helmets. This is the best crop: they are edible raw, can be brewed and are able to be farmed in all seasons. Masons can provide with readily available doors, cabinets, coffers, weapon racks, armour stands, statues, coffins... Pretty much anything you can imagine. A carpenter is also nice to have around. In the beginning, he'll make beds, bins, barrels, buckets and all other items you can't make out of stone. Those are the most important ones. They provide, in order, happy thoughts, less hauling jobs in the long run, something to put your booze in and a means to transport water to the ill. Other handy skills are bonecarving and stonecrafting. If you embark with fish (basically any type of meat without 'meat' at the end), and more specifically turtles (which I highly recommend, more later) you'll get some bones after your dwarves have eaten it. Those bones can then be carved in to an assortment of things, ranging from crowns, amulets and idols all the way to boots, helmets and armour. The stones you mine out can also be made into crafts.
The way I (nearly always) divide labours is like this:
- proficient miner/expedition leader (social skills: novice appraiser, novice judge of intent and then three other novice social skills)
- proficient miner/proficient mechanic
- proficient woodcutter/proficient carpenter (but seeing SinisterMinister's idea of proficient axedwarf, it seems a good idea: this is the dwarf which will be the most outside and will have to deal with meanies)
- proficient mason/proficient building designer
- proficient brewer/proficient cook
- proficient farmer/proficient plant gatherer
- proficient bonecarver/proficient stonecrefter
As for items/animals, I take two war dogs, two chains, one cage, one axe, two picks (or one, if I only have one miner), and the rest of the points I divide evenly between food and booze. With an equal amount of each booze. The rest I spend on plump helmet spawn. As for food, I take one of each 2-point type of meat/fish and the rest (of food-points) in turtles, they provide bones and shells. Both can be used for crafts, but I advise against using the shells for crafts: it's a common way to loose a dwarf when he's in a mood and demands shells. This can obviously be altered to allow wood if I'm in a (nearly) woodless area.
Also, this should belong in the
Gameplay Questions subforum, where you can find two very handy tutorials, which already have been linked to before.