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[Asmodeous]

I dunno, Paul, my luck with Marble has been vastly different than yours. Remember that you're not always going to get malachite in a marble layer. Marble has the same chance to get the same materials as other metamorphic layers just about. So you have pretty much the same fill out regardless. Your luck is going to make it vary as to what you end up with. So arguing over what you do and don't find in the metamorphic layers of various types is somewhat moot.

The point being made, which this continues to divert from, is that Variety is the important part. Having layers of each type (Igneous Intrusive, Igneous Extrusive, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary) should be the highest priority. Favoring Gabbro as your Intrusive layer (for diamonds) is well worth it. The sedimentary can be flux or the metamorphic can be flux (with marble). The important thing is to have as many types of rock (not different named, different types, diorite, when you already have gabbro, gives you no real major advantages for instance) in the embark as you can manage, and that at least one of them (be it Marble or one of the sediments) is Flux.

[Paul]

Actually, malachite is specifically present in marble (marble and limestone). Every time I've embarked on marble it has had tons and tons and tons of malachite. Same with limestone - its always full of malachite instead of the iron ores. On the other hand, Schist doesn't have any specific ores - so it mostly seems to go with galena and sphalerite.

I just did a check by genning a new world and going to 3 different sites in different mountains with marble with reveal. Every single marble layer I found was just loaded down with tons and tons of malachite.

And Diorite has the advantage of having more gold. Gabbro is clogged up with nickel and kimberlite, which is great for diamonds, but it makes it have very little gold. Diorite is the best stone layer for getting lots of gold - it seems like I can hardly dig anywhere in Diorite without crossing a big gold vein.

I agree that variety is the important part, but there is a huge difference between the different rocks even inside the categories.

For example:
Igneous intrusive rocks can all have gold, but:
Gabbro is the big diamond and platinum yielder, and also loaded with Nickel.
Granite is the big tin yielder, and it also has galena. Some good gems in this one too, including emeralds.
Diorite is the big gold yielder. Without anything specifically given to diorite, it has way more gold than the other two igneous intrusive.

Same with the different sedimentary fluxes. They all have iron and potential for ruby/sapphire yielding bauxite, however:
Limestone is laced with malachite and galena, giving it much less iron yield. You usually get your iron yield here from magnetite due to a lack of limonite or hematite, but sometimes it can have 0 iron if you're really unlucky.
Dolomite has big clusters of Talc, which reduces the chances of bauxite and magnetite - so less iron and less real good gems. You still get limonite or hematite pretty much guaranteed though.
Chalk has nothing special, making it give the best odds of having ruby/sapphire and iron (usually significantly more iron than the other two).

[Jake]

Why do so many people always give their carpenter the woodcutting skill? If you have a mason or a stonecrafter are you going to give them some mining skill points so they can dig out the rocks that they'll be making doors and crappy trinkets out of?

I do, as it happens. I tend towards cyclical mining and woodcutting, cutting or hewing a large batch in one go and then spending a few weeks using it up, so it keeps idlers to a minimum and helps me keep track of who's responsible for what.
Besides, there's a school of thought that says a true master craftsman must understand the materials he or she works with at a fundamental level; a weaponsmith I know of from a friend of a friend  insists on smelting his own steel from the ore and flux, and would probably go and dig it out with a pick if there was any to be had where he lives.

Wait, people actually take points in wood-cutting?  Seriously?  What a waste...
Of course, I only rarely take a miner...

Fair point, but the Dabbling to Novice transition takes quite a lot longer than Novice to Adequate. Besides, it means your intended miners are already holding picks when they game starts, potentially life-saving if you embark on a site whose native fauna dispute your claim to the status of apex predator.

[axus]

Items:

Get rid of the crutches, splints, and pig tail items.  Get cheap silk items for whatever cloth items you want.  I ditch the anvil and go for 3 axes and 3 picks, but making them yourself with an anvil might make you happier.  I get rock nuts, pig tail seeds, and plump helmets + spawn.  Oh and whatever meat they gave me by default.  There must be a better way ;p

Dwarves:
Along with that, I get 3 miners, 3 woodcutters, and a carpenter.  The woodcutters get the various farming and crafting professions.  Miners will get the noblemen type skills that are needed.  Carpenter gets some fighting skills, just in case.  Important crafts for me are stone-crafter, mechanic, mason.

Location:
Lots of trees.  I prefer temperate, of course a different environment is fun once in a while.  I agree with no running water, yes to heavy rainfall; ponds have been enough water for me and give me teh frames.  Layers with gold are a good idea, because traders pay a lot for gold goblets studded with shell ;p  I also avoid big cliffs, I like a little bit of a hill though... it's not dwarfy otherwise!

[Jurph]

I don't know if I'm just getting lucky, but the incidence of gems has really gone way up for me.  I'm finding lots of seams of kimberlite, and when I follow them I tend to find diamonds at the end of the rainbow.  If gems are as common in everyone else's game as mine, jewel-encrusting mechanisms is a nice way to amplify their value before trading them.

[Paul]

I don't know if I'm just getting lucky, but the incidence of gems has really gone way up for me.  I'm finding lots of seams of kimberlite, and when I follow them I tend to find diamonds at the end of the rainbow.  If gems are as common in everyone else's game as mine, jewel-encrusting mechanisms is a nice way to amplify their value before trading them.

Mechanisms? Pfft, I encrust masterwork steel helms with diamonds and emeralds and sapphires and rubies. Now THAT is a trade good.

[Max White]

Stonecrafting causes crappy moods.  Do not want.  You can get everything you need out of the first caravan with mechanics and, if necessary, prepared meals.  As cooking is not a mood skill, and you want the mechanic regardless, this doesn't dilute your moodable skills set with crap.

Were not here to find the best method of embark, were here to find the easiest for new players.

I know your method is better, but mine is less complex, so preferred when your still struggling to figure out what the smiley face represents.

[Paul]

Not sure if it has been noted yet, but milk is a great food source for embark (which is kinda silly, considering how bad milk would be as a travel food). It might be a bug, though, since it's currently so darn cheap (1 point). You can either cook it straight out of the barrel into meals or make it into cheese worth 5x as much. You get 2x as much food for your points. The only downside is you get a bit less barrels, but its definitely a good trade off, especially for a newbie who might have trouble getting food going. For 100 points you can get 4 barrels and 100 food (milk), or 5 barrels and 50 food (meat).

[Primax]

Not sure if it has been noted yet, but milk is a great food source for embark (which is kinda silly, considering how bad milk would be as a travel food). It might be a bug, though, since it's currently so darn cheap (1 point). You can either cook it straight out of the barrel into meals or make it into cheese worth 5x as much. You get 2x as much food for your points. The only downside is you get a bit less barrels, but its definitely a good trade off, especially for a newbie who might have trouble getting food going. For 100 points you can get 4 barrels and 100 food (milk), or 5 barrels and 50 food (meat).

Well, you can get a lot more barrels by taking non-full barrels of food I'm pretty sure. Haven't confirmed in the new version.

My basic plan is:

12 wood
4 flux (I take chalk)
4 iron ore
(for 1 x steel axe, 2 x steel pick, 1 x steel helm)

3 magma safe stone(i.e. bauxite because its pretty) (for burner, smelter, forge)
anvil

miner/weaponsmith (Miner for quick mining at start, long term is the weaponsmith)
miner/armorsmith (As above)
leader/doctor
carpenter/mason (General builder/hauler)
woodcutter1/axedwarf9 (military dwarf who starts off as woodcutter)
brewer/cook (Every fortress needs a chef)
metalsmith/gem cutter (As above, with metalsmith for best use of valuable metals(gold etc))

Add 2 dogs, 1 male cat and food/booze/animals to suit.

[Marconius]

Site-wise, I usually try to pick a place that's:
1) Not Scorching or Freezing
2) Not evil (too much for me at the moment)
3) Does not have an aquifer
4) Has a sedimentary layer (text in a lighter color)
5) Has sand for glass making
6) Has a brook or river
7) Has plenty of wood and foliage

I usually take two dogs with me, a male and a female. These generally get trained to be war dogs soon enough, so they're quite useful. I don't take cats, because immigrants often have them and they can also be traded for, so it feels like a waste of points. There are few vermin at the start anyway.

I tend to bring lots of booze, because that can be hard to make at the beginning due to lack of plants and barrels. Food is not so much of an issue, as you can just gather plants for your dwarves to eat. Taking a few plump helmets is a good idea though.

I usually take seeds for three plants: plump helmets (so I can farm them early on), pigtails and sweet pods. Otherwise take some crutches, splints, plaster powder, and of course, picks, an axe and an anvil.

My Dwarves usually have only basic professions: 3 miners, 2 woodworkers and 2 farmers/cooks/brewers. I don't take a doctor because it's rare that anyone sustains injuries right at the start, so I usually just appoint someone later.

[Max White]

Not sure if it has been noted yet, but milk is a great food source for embark (which is kinda silly, considering how bad milk would be as a travel food). It might be a bug, though, since it's currently so darn cheap (1 point). You can either cook it straight out of the barrel into meals or make it into cheese worth 5x as much. You get 2x as much food for your points. The only downside is you get a bit less barrels, but its definitely a good trade off, especially for a newbie who might have trouble getting food going. For 100 points you can get 4 barrels and 100 food (milk), or 5 barrels and 50 food (meat).

Well, you can get a lot more barrels by taking non-full barrels of food I'm pretty sure. Haven't confirmed in the new version.

My basic plan is:

12 wood
4 flux (I take chalk)
4 iron ore
(for 1 x steel axe, 2 x steel pick, 1 x steel helm)

3 magma safe stone(i.e. bauxite because its pretty) (for burner, smelter, forge)
anvil

miner/weaponsmith (Miner for quick mining at start, long term is the weaponsmith)
miner/armorsmith (As above)
leader/doctor
carpenter/mason (General builder/hauler)
woodcutter1/axedwarf9 (military dwarf who starts off as woodcutter)
brewer/cook (Every fortress needs a chef)
metalsmith/gem cutter (As above, with metalsmith for best use of valuable metals(gold etc))

Add 2 dogs, 1 male cat and food/booze/animals to suit.

While that is a very nice embark (I might mod my general one slightly to be closer to this) do you really think it is in a new players best interest to have to smith there own tools before they can dig into the ground? I remember having trouble figuring out hot to dig down, so something more complex like industry should wait.

Truth be told, most people first fortress won't last three years, and the first goblin ambush will SHRED there entire fortress, now more then ever, so there realy is no need to plan for the long term.

Plan carefully to make sure they get productive moods and cool artifacts? Not needed.
Produce metal crafts by the second year? Yea right!
Cut and encrust with gems? Good luck!

Learning how to run a productive fortress is fun, and should be left for new players to figure out on there own, any guide should only show them how to start a supply chain, how to keep the dwarfs alive in the first year and how to start a small military.

After that, they are free to learn as they please, from the wiki or there own special FUN.

[Asmodeous]

I don't understand the bringing of a cat. It's inevitable a migrant in the first wave or two will bring a cat, and with just a teensy smidgen of work (i.e. "Making sure there is beer") you can easily dwarf (hah! pun) the negative penalty for "being accosted by terrible vermin" so that it is negligible. You can even create a few vermin traps, put an animal stockpile between your meeting area and your food stockpile, and people will go out of their way to eat the vermin for you, emptying the traps and reduce the refuse pile since if someone eats that knuckle worm instead of a cat it leaves no body parts.

[Jurph]

Forging your own tools before you strike the earth is a great compression algorithm -- it trades a little dwarven labor up front for precious embark points -- but if we forgo compression and look at broader strategies like skill distributions, I think we'll probably see information that is more likely to be helpful to newcomers on the Wiki.  For example, I didn't realize woodcutting was such a waste of skill points, for example, and I've been playing since the 2D version.  (I can hear the heavy optimizers now: "you haven't been playing very hard!")

Of course there will always be aggressive min-maxing, and I think there ought to always be a place for it: DF is an operations researcher's dream-come-true, and so people who are attracted to that kind of challenge will love DF and optimize the ever-loving carp out of it.

I like to use the two most emotionally-stable dwarves in my starting seven for a Proficient Mason and (at least since the 40d versions) a designated Business Manager, because you'll always have excess stone and you'll always have business to manage... right up until you don't.  A carpenter is a good idea, and having him work quickly seems important, but maybe it's not as important as giving him a useful secondary skill that isn't moodable. 

My preferred skill layout (with moodable skills marked "m") is:

Manager - novice or no-mod skill level in several management duties (and probably doctor duties in 2010), occasionally I make this guy my novice mechanic
Mason - Proficient Mason (m), novice Building Designer, 4x mechanic
Farmer 1 - 5xGrower / 3xBrewer / 2xMiller
Farmer 2 - 5xGrower / 3xCook / 2xThresher
Carpenter - Proficient Carpenter (m), Proficient Siege Engineer
Miner 1 - Proficient Miner (m), Proficient Leatherworker
Miner 2 - Proficient Miner (m), Proficient Gem Setter (unlikely to trigger mood because mining advances faster)

I bring 6 picks and an axe and let everyone dig for the first season, and then set up farms and a masonry/mechanic area.  My initial loadout is 25 of each seed (for 5x5 plots), 41 or 51 of each booze (for extra barrels), 1 of each cheap meat (for the barrels), and a stack of turtles or cave lobster (for bones and shells).  I also try to bring a rope (for establishing a well early), some bauxite if it's available, and two dogs (for establishing a war dog breeding program).  The Gem Setting and Siege Engineering are there because the material cost of training is prohibitive: you waste a lot of your gems on basically vajazzling a masterpiece stone bureau, or you waste hundreds of logs on making inferior catapult parts that can't ever be improved and sell for basically nothing.

I'm sure my load-out will change for DF2010 - I can see gypsum gaining popularity for plaster casts, for example, and I think the "get a free barrel" hack may be a thing of the past.  I also suspect with the reworked economy, the heavy emphasis on developing a steel industry may go away.

[jplur]

Forging your own tools before you strike the earth is a great compression algorithm -- it trades a little dwarven labor up front for precious embark points -- but if we forgo compression and look at broader strategies like skill distributions, I think we'll probably see information that is more likely to be helpful to newcomers on the Wiki.  For example, I didn't realize woodcutting was such a waste of skill points, for example, and I've been playing since the 2D version.  (I can hear the heavy optimizers now: "you haven't been playing very hard!")

After reading this thread, I started a fort last night and did the 'forge your picks/axes after embark" thing.  Although it didn't take that long, it still delayed my starting industry.  The metalsmith has to build 3 workshops, then complete 4 jobs to get that first pick.  Maybe it's more useful if you're embarking on a glacier or something, but I like to hit the ground running.

[Squirrelloid]

Forging your own tools before you strike the earth is a great compression algorithm -- it trades a little dwarven labor up front for precious embark points -- but if we forgo compression and look at broader strategies like skill distributions, I think we'll probably see information that is more likely to be helpful to newcomers on the Wiki.  For example, I didn't realize woodcutting was such a waste of skill points, for example, and I've been playing since the 2D version.  (I can hear the heavy optimizers now: "you haven't been playing very hard!")

After reading this thread, I started a fort last night and did the 'forge your picks/axes after embark" thing.  Although it didn't take that long, it still delayed my starting industry.  The metalsmith has to build 3 workshops, then complete 4 jobs to get that first pick.  Maybe it's more useful if you're embarking on a glacier or something, but I like to hit the ground running.

So, some thoughts on forging your own tools.

I always do it, and I get a miner up and running by spring day 6 at the latest, so its not that slow.

Smelters require an architect and a mason to build, not a furnace operator or metal worker, so even with only one metalworking profession you can parallelize.

I always start with 1 charcoal to avoid the wood burning step.  It only costs 10 points, and it means I don't have to deconstruct the wagon first (which seems to buy me more time before food spoils).

I build 2 smelters and run 1 for making coke from coal and the other for turning copper and tin into bronze.  Since I need coke generation up and running first, the fact that I only have one architect doesn't slow me down at all, because by the time the second smelter is finished i have coke for someone to use to make bronze.

How fast you build a workshop is not dependent on skill in the required profession, so turning on masonry on a random dwarf is enough to get your smelters running as efficiently as a proficient mason (not that you wouldn't bring one most of the time anyway).

Bronze is the best weapon metal now, bar none.  Well, gold is better, but you can't choose to forge out of that.  Starting with copper and tin is cheaper than starting with iron.  Win-win.  (Steel is better for armor).

I don't pay for any furnace operating skill, i just turn it on for dwarves who have nothing better to be doing.  Doesn't seem to be much of a time issue.

Thus, a minimal forge tools set-up following the above requires: 3 stone, 1 charcoal, copper, tin, 1 bit. coal, and an anvil.  Forge 1 pick and 1 axe.  More picks and axes can be had by bringing more copper and tin and more bituminous coal to make coke from.

I tend to bring 5 bit. coal, 3 ea. copper and tin, and forge 2 picks and 2 axes (saving 2 bronze for later).

In theory you could bring sets of 2 copper, 1 tin, and 1 bismuth for bismuth bronze smelting, but there have been reports of buggy behavior with smelting that on a non-magma smelter.

Edit: if you're going truly minimal, you only need one smelter, because you'll only have one 'make coke' action, and then one 'make bronze bars' action, which have to be sequential anyway.  2 smelters becomes more efficient the more bronze you plan on making.