On the travel map:
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Num Muddyboots heads to the Good hills to have a look at the flora. He chops down a feather tree as he's thinking of making a featherwood shield, but he'll also swing west to the forest by the mountains and see what sort of trees they have. He heads back laden with gingko tree logs.
Back at Doorbears it's time to collect 20 gneiss rocks to make 20 gneiss blocks. 10 blocks for a wood-burning furnace (powered by firewood) for both making bars of refined coal and for ash, and then 10 for the kiln so he can make bake and then glaze that jug. Num makes 2 stoneware jugs, 2 mugs, a large pot and then a cauldron from the fire clay and glazes.
The waterway in the hillock to the west doesn't ever seem to freeze, but there's a fort just a short walk north of Doorbears. Why waste effort monitoring freeze time if the fort has access to cavern level one, underground water and more opportunity for drowning while swimming?
Num fast travels a short distance underground until he sees a world map water tile. Once there, like Future Boy Conan or Goku, he packs all his clothing into his backpack, and then swims back and forth between 3 slow travel map water tiles until he reaches level 3's competent swimmer. There are a few rodent folk milling about but he manages to ignore them.
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Now at competent, he expands the distance to 7 water tiles until he hits level 6's talented swimmer where even the most extreme stat penalties (stat levels dropped by half via stun/nausea/etc.) won't matter. Once at talented swimmer, it's now perfectly safe o begin swimming underneath the rock block pathway and near tree roots. He does the drowning while swimming routine until he hits Great Swimmer and his toughness moves from above average to superior, and endurance moves from average to superior.
In the last few runs since August, I've generally had most characters swim to legendary to hit teal blue superdwarven toughness and max out endurance at superior, but being lime green is kinda nice.
To me, one of the best starts for a dwarf has to be grabbing a carp and biting it to death for a first fight/hunt, given carp's DF history, but here Num does something similar given the underground critter's dwarfiness and spies a group of elk bird. He singles out the big male. Spear leg to ground, bite head to render KO (never gets old), engage in the paleolithic dwarven barbarism of finishing with a large stone knife, followed with his best Cameron Hanes impression by backpack the corpse to the surface.