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.