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[Harmonica]

My fort has ballooned in population to well over 100 in just three years, and we're getting sieged constantly. Not a problem. The problem is that this time they sieged right before the elves are going to arrive (in a month) and I don't have the dwarfpower to commit to wiping them out because they're occupied in the caverns down below (clearing out spider infestation).

I need some ideas for constructing a route into my underground trade depot from the surface, from the edge of the map, so that the elves can arrive and depart safely.

There are about 30 gobbos camped outside the front of my fort with 10 or so trolls, and an unknown number caught in cages littered around the map. I think as soon as I break the surface they will route into my fort? (I had to wall up the front entrance)

The elves never arrive with any protection, just liason dude and his traders, they're going to get obliterated unless I step in. Which would be amusing, but I need their yearly wood supplies and the lads in the military really like their fine, fine wooden she-elf figurines. For what purpose, I have no idea.

[handyman24602]

How do you know when your danger room is working correctly? Are there entries in the combat report?

[nickbii]

The Elves won't come if you're being besieged.

So you'll have to a) drive off the besiegers, or b) do without Elvish trade goods.

If you're in the caverns you've got access to cavern-trees, and if you've got 100 Dwarves surely somebody can be assigned woodcrafting. Your troops may prefer dwarvish figurines to the Elvish ones...

Nick

[Harmonica]

Hmm, I guess I'm thinking of trade sieges in the past then, when elves would show up and get attacked by gobbos. I didn't realise this was a different situation. Will the humans and dwarves still arrive?

I am loathe to produce crafts. I cannot abide them. We produce stuff with practical purpose such as storing alcohol inside of, or to bash creatures around the head with.

[Harmonica]

How do you know when your danger room is working correctly?

Your civilians aren't getting smooshed up and splattered all over your fortress?

edit: that sounds like the set up to a punchline, aswell

[snelg]

Not just the elves, but the goblins will likely hang around for quite a while before leaving. It's highly likely that the humans won't arrive either this year unless they pack up and leave for summer.

Ambushes and caravans can (and tend to) appear at the around the same time.

Which might be okay if you're not desperate for the goods they bring. Like nickbii mentioned, trees can now be found in the underground caverns, and if you've managed to clear a safe-ish area from your local spider infestation chances are pretty good you can get a lot of wood from there. Also, if you can manage to wall in an area above ground it can serve as a safe place to cut trees and forage for plants in the event of a siege. But that would probably have to be set up in advance.

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

well, first of all I meant expedition,  was thinking about caravans sorry 

it actually depends on what else you do. technically the civs would be in an endless war, but if you kill someone from your own civ that should negate it. but anyways, why not try 

hehehe I just wiped out the ONLY kobold civilization on the (small) map, only to be pushed into a 10-urist fall into water by the LAST SURVIVOR! damn.

You can... wipe them out? That's... AMAZING. I didn't know that kobolds even had sites.. how did you do it?

The Kobolds live in caves. I'm pretty sure that was adventure mode too.

[Riptendo]

I have three noob questions. I just got this game a couple days ago, And I'm struggling to keep my dwarves alive at the moment.

Question 1: I need to get some water onto an area in my fortress to start a farm, but I can't seem to get my dwarves to use the buckets I made to gather the water, and then use it on the area I need it. Can anyone tell me how to make them do this?

Question 2: How do you zoom in and out? (D:)

Question 3: I set up some beds in a room, and tried to set it as a bedroom. There was no bedroom option available, so I just put it as a meeting room. But when my dwarves have no job to do, they just wander back to the place where they started. How can I fix this?

[Smew]

How do you know when your danger room is working correctly? Are there entries in the combat report?

Yes, yes there are.

[ShinWalks]

How do you know when your danger room is working correctly? Are there entries in the combat report?

If an automated spike trap in your danger room triggers with a dwarf standing on it, you will indeed see a combat report, along the lines of, "The spinning *maple training spear* strikes the axedwarf in the right lower arm, but the attack is deflected by his -cat leather robe-!"

I have three noob questions. I just got this game a couple days ago, And I'm struggling to keep my dwarves alive at the moment.

Question 1: I need to get some water onto an area in my fortress to start a farm, but I can't seem to get my dwarves to use the buckets I made to gather the water, and then use it on the area I need it. Can anyone tell me how to make them do this?

Question 2: How do you zoom in and out? (D:)

Question 3: I set up some beds in a room, and tried to set it as a bedroom. There was no bedroom option available, so I just put it as a meeting room. But when my dwarves have no job to do, they just wander back to the place where they started. How can I fix this?

1. I've actually never made a farm using the "pond" system, try irrigating it out of a river or murky pool (but build in a floodgate that lets you turn the water back off!).

2. If you're using the SDL version, you can change the tile size using the mouse wheel, just like Google Maps or something. You can also install a different tileset with larger tiles if you prefer; the wiki has a large selection of tilesets, and you just need to edit init.txt so it knows which file you want it to use.

3. How did you "set up" those beds? Are they in a stockpile? To be slept on and used as a bedroom, beds must be built by pressing 'b' > 'b'. (Apologies if you already know this.) after a bed is built, it can be made into a bedroom or a barracks by querying the bed with 'q' and pressing 'r' to make a room.

Ah! If you saw an option to "make a meeting room," then your weren't looking at a bed, you were looking at a table (or maybe a chair? can't remember). When you press 'q' to query a building, watch carefully what is blinking. Make sure your cursor is closer to the bed you want than it it is to any other building. If the bed won't respond to a query, it means that it has not been built yet, so see previous paragraph.

[Harmonica]

Question 1: I need to get some water onto an area in my fortress to start a farm, but I can't seem to get my dwarves to use the buckets I made to gather the water, and then use it on the area I need it. Can anyone tell me how to make them do this?

You need to use zones (i).

Zone an area around a water source: i, [enter] to start designating an area, [enter] to finish. If it's a lake then you want to zone the bordering land above it, not the water tiles themselves.
Then make it a water source: press [w] on that zone screen. The option will enable.

Make sure it's safe (no carp, etc, not a rushing river which floods regularly).

Now dig out a farm area. On the z-level above, dig out the same size area, and channel through [d][h] so that you have some holes to the farm area. This is where your bucket brigade will put the water. Create more zones over each hole using the same method as before, but instead of making them water sources they need to be [p] pits.

Press [shift+p] when you are on the zone menu (i, and cursor over your pits), and you'll get a list of animals (if there are any). Ignore that, but press [f] and at the bottom it should say 'Is Pond (not full)'. [space] to back out of those menus.

Now you should see dwarves go to the water source and begin tipping water through the holes, filling the area below (you will need a fair amount of water if the farm area is very large). You can [k] look to see if the farm squares are muddy, so you can build a farm. It's best if you wait until you can build one single large farm, so that only one building operation needs to take place (also I believe this helps when jobs are created to plant and gather crops).

Make sure you stop the bucket brigade when you have muddy tiles, or you will drown your farmers!

[Harmonica]

Like nickbii mentioned, trees can now be found in the underground caverns, and if you've managed to clear a safe-ish area from your local spider infestation chances are pretty good you can get a lot of wood from there.

Unfortunately it's not only the spiders, it's a river full of carp and crocodiles, and a forgotten beast stomping around (currently not in view so I don't have a clue where he is). Fun.

[snelg]

Question 1: I need to get some water onto an area in my fortress to start a farm, but I can't seem to get my dwarves to use the buckets I made to gather the water, and then use it on the area I need it. Can anyone tell me how to make them do this?

There's a pretty good post stickied in this forum http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=67744.0 that might help you get started.
Buckets is actually one of the trickier ways to get an area muddied for farming. If you've got murky pools digging into one and have it drain into a larger room will get you a nice area ready for farming. just remember to seal that new entrance into the fortress or flying creatures could get in there. Another way is to get the water from a river/stream/brook/lake etc. the problem here being that there's a LOT more water than you want (infinite most likely) so you need to set up a door/floodgate or two and hook it up to lever(s) between the water and the room. There's more info in the thread I linked to.

Like nickbii mentioned, trees can now be found in the underground caverns, and if you've managed to clear a safe-ish area from your local spider infestation chances are pretty good you can get a lot of wood from there.

Unfortunately it's not only the spiders, it's a river full of carp and crocodiles, and a forgotten beast stomping around (currently not in view so I don't have a clue where he is). Fun.

You've got carp in the caverns? I can see why you're not all over the place already.
Do you think it might be possible to set up some walls and cage traps and maybe cut away some ramps to make it safer? That forgotten beast might be a problem, but if you get a chance have a look at it. Some of them are much weaker than they seem and break apart if you so much as look at it. But there's plenty of them who aren't so watch out!

[Mercenare]

I checked, it has no leaders, is their anyway to make it get leaders x.x

your mother civ is dead. keep all your dwarves alive and happy. births will slowly get your population up. wall of the entire map.

(btw check your "civs" screen, 'c' from the menu, to see info about civilizations. it's either not there or has no leaders)

have fun and not Fun! 

[Sphalerite]

I checked, it has no leaders, is their anyway to make it get leaders x.x

No.  Your civ is dead.  Your dwarves are the last in the world.  If you want to have a viable external dwarven civilization, you need to start over with a new world.