Traders and roads. If I build a road leading to the edge of my map, will they always spawn from there? Currently they Spawn 2 z-levels up and on the N side of my map, this is pretty far away from my entrance and I'm tired of Ambushes.
Not reliably. When a caravan appears, the game checks to see if there is a 3 tile wide path from your trade depot to the map edge. If there is, the caravan will appear on a randomly chosen path on the map edge that is connected to your trade depot by this 3 tile wide path. If there is not, the caravan will appear on any randomly chosen point on the map edge. You can influence where the caravan appears by enclosing a route between your trade depot and the map edge such that there is only one area connected to your depot by a 3 tile wide path.
Roads don't influence where the caravan appears, other than by keeping the area of the road free of trees.
Also, sometimes a civilization will only be able to reach certain parts of your map, and caravans from that civilization will only spawn on parts of the map that civilization can reach. For example, if your map is bisected by a river, you might find that caravans will only appear on one side of the river.
If I build a Trade Depot in a Cavern that is open to a side, will they spawn on that z-level?
Caravans will never spawn in the caverns, although they will leave by the caravans if no surface route is available, and sometimes even if one is.
Are Burrows buggy right now? I can make a Burrow and then tell all my Citizens to chill there, but then I cannot get my Citizens to go back to work without deleting the Burrow.
How are you telling your citizens to go to the burrow? If you're assigning the citizens to the burrow through the burrow menu, then you need to un-assign them with the same menu to remove them from the burrow. If you're using a military alert to send all non-military to a burrow, you turn the alert off to release them.
Are Turkeys buggy right now? My main save right now embarked with 2 Turkeys and two years later still no eggs or poults. I moved them and pastured them in a new place with new animals, and now I have chicks and poults. I really could've used to poults in my first two years. -_-
To have turkeys reproduce, you need to make and build nest boxes. The turkey hens will claim the nest boxes. The turkey hen will then sit on the nest box until the eggs hatch. If the turkey hen or the eggs leave the nest box, even for a moment, the eggs will never hatch. If you have any food stockpiles that accept eggs, your dwarves will remove the eggs from the nest. If you want them to hatch, you need to either manually forbid the eggs, disable storage of turkey eggs on your food stockpiles, or put the turkeys in a room and lock the door until the poults hatch. Also, if you're cooking prepared meals, you'll want to disable cooking of turkey eggs.
Why can't I dig up?
I assume you mean to dig into a rock/soil layer above the one your miner is on? He needs to be able to reach the upper layer, so you either need to dig a ramp on the lower layer or dig an up stair and then dig a down stair right above it.
I don't think I'm playing this game the way other people do. I dig a little and then set up shop. I have 60ish dwarves but still have yet to strike metal. Do people dig like crazy or what? Every now and then I'll expand a little, just hit a few caverns. Had a forgotten beast show up and kill my legendary miner.
Metal is incredibly, annoyingly rare in the current version. I like to make absurdly large and elaborate megaprojects out of stone blocks.
Is Cave Moss supposed to fly through the air, enter your fort, and then populate EVERY SINGLE UNDERGROUND TILE IN THE GAME? Just curious. Random caves on the highest z-levels of my map have cave moss there now. Pretty cool, my 0-tree map now has trees everywhere.
Underground plant reproduction is by magic flying spores. The moment you open the caverns, every tile in the map is infected.
Water Sources. WTF. So I think I've figured it out. The 7/7 tile is "under pressure" and I should not dig a hole out thinking the water is like Minecraft and will just come in a bit and give me easy access to water. Do I need to be on the z-level above, where there is "Open Space" above the water and designate my Water Source there? Do I have to designate a Water Source for my dwarves to use it?
If you want to designate a water source, you make it on the ground above the water, next to the water source. You don't need to designate a water source, but it is useful if you want to control where your dwarves are getting water from. Better yet, make a well.
Apparently I have a tame bat in a cage. Where/how/what do I do with this? I'd like to make it a pet for someone and have no idea how to at all. I don't know where it is or what is necessary to deal with it.
You probably bought a cage from a caravan, not realizing it had a tame bat in it. You should be able to find it in the animals screen and make it available for adoption. I don't recommend this, flying pets once adopted have a way of getting free and then forcing the owner to spend a lot of time trying to catch it. You can also build the cage somewhere public so everyone can admire the bat in a cage as they walk past.
Why are caverns so messed up? I would think that a cavern is a cavern, not just a billion pillars in a small area with ramps everywhere letting you woodcutters getting ambushed at every single little spot.
That's just the way caverns are at the moment: a twisty mass of little tunnels and pillars.
Are Bonecarvers and Bone Bolts bugged? The moment a Dwarf starts carving Bone Bolts it immediately goes to Max CLT and takes FOREVER.
Known bug: bones, hair, and other animal parts instantly fill up the workshop to max clutter. No workaround at the moment.
I started a new world, it was pretty cool. Lots of ore everywhere (For the first time in like 10 worlds, I'll be able to start smithing in the first year) Problem is, no where to farm. I know that I embarked with 3 buckets but channeling out a 2xN area and making it a "Pit/Pond" did nothing. Is this bugged?
You should be able to place a mine on any patch of soil. Are you trying to muddy stone? I usually just pump or channel water where I need it to go when I need to make mud for a farm.
I'm reading BoatMurdered and I don't understand the supports. Have Cave In's changed since then? I don't want my strip mining operations to cave-in.
Boatmurdered was in a very, very old version of Dwarf Fortress. The game has changed vastly since then. Cave-in mechanics are completely different now.