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[RCIX]

What are all of those tricks that anybody with some DF experience uses, but noobs don't know to do (and thus make their life harder)? For instance, designating separate stockpiles for food and brew, the food ones not accepting any barrels (to make sure you always have empty barrels for drink if you need them).

[nbonaparte]

D-B-D

Mass-dumping designation.

[hailthefish]

DF Wiki open in another window at all times, mostly to look up stones, but also for other things.

I'm considering making a logreader program that adds hyperlinks to DFwiki for the "You have struck <stuff>" messages.

[Agamemnon]

Holding shift while moving the cursor to cut the number of keystrokes by 90%.

[Lytha]

- every dwarf can do any labor. Only because that little bugger arrived as a wood burner or fish dissector, he doesn't have to remain useless for ever.

- on the embark screen, change your booze supply. If you for instance bring 5 rum, 5 ale, 5 beer, 5 wine, then you get 4 barrels. If you would do what the default tries to trick you do to (10 beer, 10 wine), then you would only get 2 barrels.

- your first priority, after getting your supplies to a stockpile so that the food doesn't rot, is a farming plot. Not a bunch of cozy living rooms or a great dining hall or a well or a mad irrigation project. Just a farming plot and a still. It's a good idea therefore to start out with a water source of any type.

- use the work order manager. Don't waste time by searching your workshops and then selecting stuff manually by scrolling around.

- use Dwarf Therapist.

- set the population cap to something like 1 or 2 unless you like your massive immigration waves with all the problems they are affected with. Check out the rest of the init files as well.

- changing the raw files can help you enjoy the game a lot more. For instance, if a cat doesn't start to pop out 15 new kittens every half a year anymore, the game turns out to be just a tiny little bit more enjoyable (IMHO).

[ECrownofFire]

When embarking, get one of every kind of 2 cost meat. Just the meat though. Each gives you a separate barrel. Don't get several of the same animal though, those get tossed into the same barrel. Even the 4 cost and 6 cost meat is worth it for the extra barrel.

When designating any stockpile, you can "q" it and press "s". In that menu, you can change what it accepts. In addition, in the "q" menu, you can set the max number of barrels, and you can tell it to take from another stockpile (I'm not 100% sure this one works).

If you ever kill merchants, don't use magma. Magma is only useful when you want to sure that they die. You kill merchants for their stuff, magma burns their stuff up. Go ahead and use it for almost anything else though.

Init options are a must, if you don't like the weird ground tiles, change the init. If you can't handle 200 dwarves, change the max population. I also recommend changing the max amount of children. Turning off invaders are good for megaprojects.

I'm not sure if this still works, but when embarking, get alcohol in a digit ending in either 6 or 1, every 5 gets you a barrel, so make it one more. Again, I don't know if this works, but it will be worth it if it does.

Any built walls are 100% indestructible, this includes walls built out of ice. Use these to survive. Doors are acceptable for most creatures, but can be destroyed by some.

Miasma is bad, either build the refuse stockpile exposed to the outside, which means no miasma, or build it with a diagonal entrance, miasma does not move diagonally.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Triggered doors work just as well as floodgates-- better even.

Building destroyers can't destroy upwards.

Flyers won't go someplace unless they can path there on foot.

You can designate fortifications on edge tiles to drain fluid off the map.

Trees won't grown on ramps, roads, built floors, or stockpiles, even empty stockpiles.

Grates and bridges stop the spread of contaminants.

[Lawec]

Always be ready to lock down the fort in case you get invaders and you don't have any military to take care of them.
Or use cage traps. Lot's of them.

[leftycook]

dont bring splints and crutches with you on embark, saves you sixty points you can spend on other things- just make them from wood when you arrive. Chances are if you need medical supplies before you've built a carpenters shop, you're in more trouble then a few crutches can remedy anyway.

[billw]

Yeah, spend the money you would have spent on medical supplies on a couple of war dogs instead (male and female), and chain one at your entrance (remember to bring a rope). This is as much of a defence you need for the first year+. Kobolds and snatchers will shriek and run in terror.

[MiniMacker]

D-B-D

Mass-dumping designation.

Hhhhhh... I think I love you.

[Tanelorn]

- Use macros for repetitive tasks (like digging always the same pattern on different z-levels).
Ctrl + r to start recording
Ctrl + r to stop recording
Ctrl + s to save
Ctrl + l to load
Ctrl +p to play

- for rock crafts, make mugs: you get 3 for each stone. Get rich quick.

- fish turtles. Someone will eventually want a shell and die if there isn't one.

[godisdead132]

add [SPEED:0] to dwarves in the creature_standard raw makes everything soooooooooo much faster 1 hours worth of diging in 1-2 minutes ect ect....

[style]

Get the steel production up and running fast. Even if it looks complicated at first. Steel is your best friend. No other race can make it. This gives you an immense advantage in armor and weapon strength. A steel axe slices through bronze or iron armor in more than 90% of the cases, while an iron axe has a 2% or so chance to penetrate steel.

Wood burner, smelter (better two or three of them), smithy. That's all you need.

the production process in the smelter:
iron ore + coal => iron bar
iron bar + flux stone + coal => pig iron bar
pig iron bar + iron bar + flux stone + coal => 2 steel bars

Fossil coal needs to be coked in the smelter before it can be used. This process takes fuel either. Bituminous coal has double the coke output of lignite there. As long as you have wood, you can make masses of charcoal too. Charcoal and coke are interchangeable.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The best way to get rich quick is an experienced cook making masterful lavish meals. Even with standard ingredients and an average cook one single stack of lavish meals can easily reach a value of 1000 and more. It takes a lot of stone mugs and bins to get so much.

[SmileyMan]

Embark with a Proficient plant gatherer/grower, then designate a quite large nearby area for plant gathering.  Channel a square area in some sand/soil/loam and build a surface farm in the bottom of it.  Dwarves will eat raw and brew: wild strawberries, fisher berries and (if you're lucky enough to get them) sun berries.  You can farm the seeds - this is much easier than setting up an underground farm and will get you producing food and booze early on without needing to cook.

(edited to add)
Also, lead has a low material value, and is not used for any alloy reactions.  It's therefore the ideal material to make your bins and barrels from if you are low on wood.  Luckily, lead poisoning isn't in the game (yet)!