Let's see:
- the Report screen. Not only is it just fun to read how badly that stone trap mangled a raccoon--not only is it a secondary way to see how well a fight is going--but it's also a way to tell when something is going horribly wrong.
i.e. somehow two deer had gotten loose from the kitchens and had started harassing people in the dining room. All I saw to start was some 'Urist McDwarf cancels action: deer' messages so I check the report and see that he was being assaulted by said deer. I use Zoom from within Reports and see that it's in the dining room.
Which leads to the second wonderful feature: Kill Target
I had my military dwarves training at the time, but a quick S-A-K (A because I had two squads) and 6 dwarves were there in a flash beating that deer up. Of course, they all had training weapons so ..well.. I think 'torture' is a better term after seeing the reports: Early on someone lodged a pick in the deer then, later, someone else twisted the thing in it's throat. Even with that with holes from top to bottom, the thing still took almost a month to die.
Karma is a #(%)( though. When my first ambush happened, the same dwarves were told to Kill the whole pack of them. Only one survived, pretty much due to falling down a ramp and out of sight until the goblins went away then getting treated at the hospital.
-Burrows
I have a floor WAY DOWN in my fort to abuse the magma and thanks to burrows, I can lock my metal workers in there with their own dining room and bedrooms. Even when there's a MASS of hauling jobs, I don't have to worry about them leaving to do it. I only wish I knew about it earlier so I could design my fort around that.
Being able to order all of my civilians into the well stocked dining room to hide and all of them doing it INSTANTLY was also refreshing.
wooden Training weapons. Simply having easy access to wooden weapons (my wood economy is up LONG before my metal) means not having only wrestlers.
The underground, if only because I feel that I can embark without worrying that the trip will be boring.
Oddly enough, some of the 'complaints' I also consider good as well. The 'work till you're hungry' mentality for one, partially because it gives a good reason to have more than just ONE of each type of worker and partially because it IS an increase to the challenge that you can solve with proper management.